Delta Construction is more than a week into the city’s A Street renovation between 1st and 5th Avenues. EMMA ROUTLEY/THE CHRONICLE
CRESWELL — City planner Maddie Phillips said that to imagine what the A Street construction will look like in its completion come October, she wants you to “think: Oregon Avenue, but smaller-scale.”
An $891,994 project, Delta Construction this week began the process to replace the road, adding sidewalks, street lights and landscaping. The water and sewer infrastructure will also be updated.
The construction has forced closures on A Street from 1st to 4th streets, city manager Michelle Amberg said. North 2nd and 3rd streets are closed, but North 1st and 4th streets will remain open for the duration of the project.
“The A Street sidewalks will be unique, as the design for walks on the south side of A Street will be designed to match downtown commercial-style streetscape … with planters and slightly wider walkways than residential-style street design,” Phillips said.
EMMA ROUTLEY/ THE CHRONICLE
The city and Creswell School District team are in the process of building an application for Safe Routes to School funding. They were not successful in the last round of applications, Phillips said.
“We are moving along with the improvements anyway because the road itself needs repair,” Amberg said. The project will improve travel safety for students and can be used as a match in future grant applications, she said. Funding for the project comes from City Reserve Funds as well as the ODOT Fund Exchange and Bicycle and Footpath Fund.
Safe Routes to School supports nearly a third of Creswell’s population who are school-age and need a safe way to walk and bike to school, Phillips said, noting that numerous studies and trends have been looked at in-depth to show that kids who walk and bike to school live healthier, are better able to focus and learn while in the classroom, and they gain a level of responsibility and independence at a young age.
EMMA ROUTELY/THE CHRONICLE
“A Street provides a connection for students who live up North 1st Street neighborhood a safe route to reach both Creslane Elementary and Creswell Middle School,” Phillips said. She said there is a high concentration of school-age kids who live in that neighborhood, and parents and students indicated through surveys that they do not feel the route is safe enough to let them walk or bike to school.
By providing sidewalks along A Street, students will now have a safe way to travel on sidewalks from as far north as the city limits up 1st Street, all the way to Creslane and/or the middle school,” she said.
