Thank you everyone who has been involved with “SAVE THE CULVER BOULEVARD MEDIAN PARK – AGAIN!”
Your participation has again helped achieve some important results regarding this project. It is currently looking like it will in fact be possible to save some of the trees, although I want to emphasize that this is unofficial and tentative. But both the City engineers and the private design company Tetra Tech are taking this concern to heart and are exploring ways to save as many good trees as possible. We shall see how this evolves as the project proceeds, but we are hopeful.
At the 12/7/2017 City Council Meeting we asked that the city delay the project pending further study of our concerns listed in the petition. They did not do so and went ahead and awarded the design contract to Tetra Tech for design of the water infiltration portion of the project. However, they were sensitive to our concerns and included language in the contract to provide for extra community outreach meetings. They also asked the staff to create a citizens advisory committee that would be able to provide and focus community input more intimately with the city engineering staff and the design company.
So please understand that this project is now in final design and that we need to continue to provide input so that we wind up with the best possible outcome. It is important that many people continue to come to the future public meetings and share their input ideas and concerns with the planners. There are still outstanding questions of concern that we are hopeful will be answered in these public meetings. Please attend and ask the hard questions to make sure we are getting real answers.
At the 3/28/2018 City Council Meeting the council approved the recommendation of the City Engineering department to award the design contract for the road realignment and Median Park rebuild portion of the project to the same company Tetra Tech that already is working on designing the water infiltration project. We feel this was a good choice as integrating all the design under one roof should help us get of achieve better results for the community. The landscape design team of Tetra Tech has very impressive credentials, so by working with the Tetra Tech team we are expecting we can have a great rebuilt park, to have a traffic corridor that is safe for residents on both north and south sides of Culver Boulevard and a park we can all share and be proud of.
At this meeting City Council also appointed six people to the citizens advisory committee. From the North side of Culver: Karen Randall, Glenn Spann, Steve Levinson and from the South side of Culver: Steve Siegel, George Young and Zach Bennington.
Also at this meeting two community members spoke about their concerns for the project. Kimberly Fergusonof Huron Ave. spoke to council about her opposition to the “bulb or bump outs” that will restrict traffic flow in an already challenged neighborhood.Paula Amezola of little Culver North spoke to council about her concerns for her children during the construction phase of the project.
The City engineering staff are proposing the following rough schedule:
Meeting with city staff and Resident Advisory Committee April 2018
First Community outreach meeting May 2018
Submittal of 30 % of preliminary design plans June 2018
2nd Community outreach meeting July 2018
Submittal of 60% of design plans August 2018
3rd community outreach meeting September 2018
Completion of Bid ready construction plans,specs,cost November 2018
City Council approval of final plans and putting it to bid December 2018
Construction Bid period Dec 2018- Jan 2019
Award Construction Contract
Steve Levinson
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