Tag: one-way

Lower Cascades road options to be heard by Bloomington city council

Lower Cascades meeting (July 22, 2023)
Lower Cascades meeting (July 22, 2023)
Isabel Piedmont-Smith Lower Cascades meeting (July 22, 2023)
Carole Canfield, Lower Cascades meeting (July 22, 2023)
Al Carpenter Lower Cascades meeting (July 22, 2023)
Larry Allen, Lower Cascades meeting (July 22, 2023)
Extract from Bloomington Transportation Plan.
Locator map for proposed road closure.
Section of road proposed for closure. It stopped short of the underpass, and did not extend to College Avenue.

On the north side of Bloomington, there’s currently no dedicated non-motorized pathway between Miller-Showers Park, up the Old SR 37 highway through Lower Cascades Park up to Cascades Park.

On Wednesday (July 26), Bloomington’s city council will get a presentation from planning and transportation director Scott Robinson with four possible approaches to address that situation.

No vote on any proposal appears on Wednesday’s agenda.

The four options are sketched out in a memo from Robinson to the council.

One of them is labeled the “no-build” option, which means that cyclists would share the roadway with cars the way they do now, and pedestrians would walk in the road or else beside the road, where there is no improved surface.

The other three options are: closing the road to automobile traffic and dedicating the existing roadway just for non-motorized use; constructing a non-motorized path that is separate from the roadway; or converting the road to one-lane only for automobile traffic and the other lane for non-motorized traffic

On Saturday in Lower Cascades Park the “no build” option was the overwhelmingly preferred approach for the crowd of around 85 people who had gathered in the Waterfall Shelter to express their views. Continue reading “Lower Cascades road options to be heard by Bloomington city council” →

College-Walnut corridor study: Thursday meeting set to continue with “starter ideas”

College-Walnut corridor public meeting (June 13, 2023)
College-Walnut corridor public meeting (June 13, 2023)
Map showing north-south extent of the study area.
College-Walnut corridor public meeting (June 13, 2023)
College-Walnut corridor public meeting (June 13, 2023)

On Thursday, starting at 6 p.m. in city council chambers, some “starter ideas” for the redesign of College Avenue and Walnut Street—Bloomington’s main north-south corridor—will be presented by Toole Design, the city’s consultant on the project.

The “starter ideas” will be based on feedback from the public collected over the last few weeks, through in-person meetings and online surveys that have been advertised on the project webpage.

The initial collection of perspectives from the public culminated in a public meeting on Tuesday night.

At the conclusion of the meeting, the team from Toole got reports from five tables where groups of attendees had spent a half hour poring over a table-sized aerial print of the corridor stretching from the 45/46 bypass southward to Allen Street. Allen Street is south of the place where College and Walnut merge into a single street—it’s a bit north of Switchyard Park.

The groups were asked to consider three questions:

  • What do you like and want to see retained?
  • What do you dislike and want to see changed?
  • What is missing that you would like to see created?

Continue reading “College-Walnut corridor study: Thursday meeting set to continue with “starter ideas”” →

Walnut-College study contract OK’d by Bloomington board of works, could tackle two-way question

A new conceptual design for College Avenue and Walnut Street—from the 45/46 bypass to Allen Street—is supposed to be delivered to the city of Bloomington by the end of 2023.

Allen Street is south of the place where College and Walnut merge into a single street—it’s a bit north of Switchyard Park.

The conceptual redesign for the corridor is just one of the elements that Toole Design Group is supposed to provide under a $170,000 contract that was approved by Bloomington’s board of public works last Wednesday.

The contract with Toole was approved on a rare non-unanimous vote by the three-member board. Continue reading “Walnut-College study contract OK’d by Bloomington board of works, could tackle two-way question” →

Bloomington plan commission: Former Player’s Pub site OK’d for 34 beds in 4-story building

In this rendering, the view is from Walnut Street looking west down the one-way westbound alley. The entrance to the ground floor parking garage is visible towards the Walnut Street side of the building.

A four-story building with 34 apartments, to be constructed on South Walnut Street just a bit north of Seminary Park, was approved by Bloomingoton’s plan commission at its Monday night meeting.

It’s the site of the former Player’s Pub, and before that Boxman’s Restaurant. In early February a year ago, Bloomington’s city council declined to grant the building designation as a historic structure. The building was demolished in spring of 2021.

The 34 apartments include 20 studios at 500-square feet apiece and 14 one-bedroom units with 684-square feet each.

The site plan was in front of the plan commission not because of its unit count, which is under the threshold of 50 units that requires commission review. Triggering plan commission review was the gross floor area of 35,632 square feet, which is more than the threshold of 15,000 square feet.

The project will not need additional approval from the city council. Based on a letter on behalf of the owner included in the meeting information packet, construction is supposed to start in late summer or early fall of 2022 and finish by August 2023.

Continue reading “Bloomington plan commission: Former Player’s Pub site OK’d for 34 beds in 4-story building” →