5 blocks, 100 trees and $1 million
Could beautifying part of Wynnton Road restore a neighborhood and blur a dangerous dividing line?
When completed, the revamped section of Wynnton Road will be lined with more than 100 trees. The artist's rendering above shows how the roadway will look when construction and planting is finished.
Walk Wynnton Road on a sunny day and you may have to stop at the Rite Aid or Walgreen's for some sunscreen.
There's little shade beyond the shadows of signs planted on the roadside.
MidTown Inc. wants to plant something else along that corridor, from the intersection at Peacock and Brown avenues east to Hilton Avenue and Tate Drive: Trees.
Trees along the curb. Trees in the triangles at Forest Avenue and Hilton Avenue. Trees in the road where a painted median now runs from Forest Avenue to Cedar Avenue, between Davis Broadcasting and the Wynnton Building that architect Dave Froelich plans to give a face-lift.
The face-lift MidTown Inc. wants to give Wynnton Road would be a relative forest: More than 100 trees would be set out as new sidewalks are put in and utilities are buried underground, instead of hanging overhead. Overhead would be new street lights on black aluminum poles. Also in the redesign are two-toned, textured, brick-stamped crosswalks.
All this would be funded by a state transportation enhancement grant of about $800,000, to which MidTown would add about $200,000. If all goes well, the million-dollar makeover could be finished in just a few years.
Why?
Why spend $1 million to beautify just five blocks?
"To us this is so important because we think that the inaccessibility of this road, the inability to cross it safely, is a huge psychological barrier, and has allowed this to become symbolic of a divided Columbus," says MidTown Executive Director Teresa Tomlinson. "So we think not only is it going to be beautiful, not only is it going to create economic redevelopment as it enhances the value of these properties, it's going to make people feel that they can cross the divide."
Daily shepherding pedestrians across that divide is Remona Woods, the crossing guard who guides students across the street in front of the Wynnton Arts Academy elementary school. "I think I have about the busiest intersection in town," Woods said. She has worked that crossing for 18 months now, and rarely has a problem with motorists, she said: "Sometimes, every now and then, they'll come through here speeding." And the speeders usually are traveling too fast for her to get tag numbers.
The only other problem is that drivers occasionally block the crosswalk, she said. She was unsure how the road's redesign would affect that.
Sitting at a city bus stop in front of the school was Jeff Cogman, who figured he catches the bus there about three times a week. He thought some tree shade would make a nice difference.
Wynnton Arts Academy Principal Nancy Johnson thought the street redesign would make a big difference in student safety, giving the road a "neighborhood feel" that reminds drivers they're not traveling an expressway. Some obviously forget: "It's just people in their own world when they come through here who don't realize they're in a school zone," she said.
The first stage
Tomlinson said improving this stretch of Wynnton Road is just the first stage of a long-range improvement plan, with more to come as more money becomes available. MidTown's north-south borders are Talbotton Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Its east-west boundaries are Interstate 185 and 10th Avenue, so this road called either Wynnton or Macon slices right through MidTown's middle.
The streetscapes project has advantages beyond beautification, she said. Among them:
• Lanes would be a standard width. The road's current fluctuations in lane width confuse drivers, who tend to sideswipe each other's side mirrors. "One of the reasons that happens is there's no lane continuity here," she said. "You go from 11-foot lanes to 10 to 9 1/2 and back to 11. So one of the things the traffic engineers are jazzed about is this has perfect lane continuity... . That actually makes traffic go more efficiently." Each lane would be a standard width of 10 feet. Between Forest Avenue and Cedar Avenue, there would be a 5-foot planted median where now there's a 7-foot painted median.
• Crosswalks would be clearer and safer. "They'll be brick stamped, and they'll be a beige and reddish brick combination, so there'll be a huge color differentiation, and they'll also be textured," Tomlinson said. The difference in color and texture more clearly will define the crosswalks both for drivers and pedestrians. "Brick stamped" means the crosswalks will have a color and pattern that resembles brick paving.
• New sidewalks and curb cuts will comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Currently some blocks have no curb cuts. "There actually are places where if you're handicapped, you can get into the street but you can't get out," Tomlinson said. "This will clean all that up."
The anchor
This streetscapes makeover will be anchored by an intersection realignment at Peacock and Brown Avenues. That's a separate state Department of Transportation project expected to cost $1.37 million, with the work to start any day now.
MidTown got engineers to modify that intersection design so it wouldn't leave so much barren pavement. "We were able to scale it back and take some of that money and use it toward crosswalks, pedestrian walkways, the aesthetic features of it, brick-stamped crosswalks, the poles," Tomlinson said. That became the pattern MidTown decided to adopt for remodeling the street to the east, from Peacock and Brown 2,300 linear feet to Hilton Avenue and Tate Drive.
One of the businesses along that stretch is Wynnton Hardware at 2328 Wynnton Road. Owner Frank Comer said he has seen places where mature trees are tall enough to shade the street and provide a comfortable and inviting atmosphere, as in parts of Savannah, and places where trees simply hide buildings and dump their debris in the road.
He said he supports MidTown's effort to create a neighborhood environment, but he wonders how long that will take.
"I guess really it's going to depend on the type of tree that they select," he said. "If it's going to be something that's more of an ornamental, cylindrical-type tree that's just going to give you that green effect, that's one thing. But if you're trying to create this massive canopy deal, I just don't know how good that's going to look. It's going to take a bunch of years before it looks good."
Tomlinson expects low-stature trees such as crepe myrtles to be planted in the median from Forest to Cedar Avenue. For the roadside, large canopy trees such as oaks are planned, not only to provide shade, but to grow so tall that they don't block business signs.
A new face
Now 18 months old, MidTown so far has invested much of its time and money in research and planning. The advocacy group used $50,000 of the $150,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation to study the Wynnton corridor and find ways to revitalize it. The study recommended two pahses. This streetscapes work is the first phase. The next will be improving land us to spur redevelopment, Tomlinson said.
This Wynnton Road redesign will be the most evident progress MidTown has made so far. "This is the thing that's going to change the face of MidTown, because it's the first construction project," Tomlinson said.
Right now the nonprofit is waiting for the state tranporation board to approve the grant application, she said. If approved, the work should proceed quickly: "The money has to be used within two years of the day you get it."
Once the work is done, the difference should be striking.
"There's no doubt that trees soften the urban enviornment," Tomlinson said. "To me, that's going to be the biggest aesthetic change. But the biggest functional change is going to be that people feel that they can cross this road without risking life and limb, and right now, that is not the case."
If all goes well, pedestrians walking Wynnton Road one day will have it made in the shade.