As the spring sports season approaches, buses and traffic for games held at Roger Short Soccer Complex will take a new route to get to the soccer fields.
A portion of Seventh Avenue North, between Third and Fifth Streets, will be permanently closed at the beginning of the year, as construction of the Parkview development breaks ground in Burns Bottom.
The closure will reroute buses including Mississippi University for Women soccer teams, any teams coming to play MUW from out of state and local high school teams for next season, Tom Velek, deputy director for Lowndes County Recreation Department, said at a Partners in Progress meeting held Tuesday at the Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Partners in Progress is a group composed of the Parkview developers Saunders Ramsey and Nic Parish, county and city representatives, which was formed to discuss potential challenges at the soccer complex due to the upcoming construction of the mixed-use project.
“(A reroute was) not something that can wait,” Velek told The Dispatch. “… We have to talk about the fact that when construction is happening (for the Parkview development), there will essentially be no entrance from the east. … So these are short term issues we have to deal with now.”
The Parkview Redevelopment is the culmination of a decade-long effort by the Columbus Redevelopment Authority, which purchased and cleared more than 70 lots in the Burns Bottom neighborhood between Third and Fourth Street and Second and Seventh Avenue North. The Friendly City developers announced plans earlier this year to transform the area into a mixed-use neighborhood featuring homes and commercial spaces.
Along with the closure at Seventh Avenue North, a portion of Third, Fourth and Sixth Avenues North in the redevelopment area are expected to close in February and will eventually be converted into green space areas, Parish said.
Parish said the Seventh Avenue North closure, along with the other three roads, is a matter of expenses and safety. Seventh Avenue North will still extend to the Fourth Street M.B. Church parking lot, cutting off immediately after.
“We simply just do not have enough money to keep all of the avenues open,” Parish said, noting that too many entrances into the park would create a safety concern. “… One kind of detail there is that Seventh Avenue didn’t have a light. It was a very dangerous intersection coming out on Fifth Street, so (the city had) even talked about closing it off entirely.”
Once the Seventh Avenue North portion is closed, buses will reroute to enter the soccer complex through Third Street North. Bus traffic will exit through Coretta Street as normal, County Engineer Zach Foster told The Dispatch.
Fifth Avenue North will remain open during the initial groundbreaking but will temporarily close at some point during construction for planned improvements, Parish said.
The new route will require an expansion of the current intersection of Third Street North and Seventh Avenue North by scaling back curbs in order to increase the radius for a left turn to give additional room for larger buses to make turns on the route, Foster said.
“It’s currently a little tight,” Foster said. “It’s fine for a normal sized school bus, but when you start getting tour buses and stuff, we may need to look at increasing the radius of the curb so they can get in and out.”
Foster estimated that the additional work to expand that intersection should only cost about $5,000. Parish plans to propose including the expansion within initial infrastructure work already being done by the Columbus Redevelopment Authority.
“I’m going to propose it to the CRA that we take care of it in the city’s portion of the public work, but either way we’ll get it taken care of,” Parish said.
Getting the ball rolling
Tuesday’s meeting also focused on potential expansions to the soccer complex, including adding new sports fields and parking lots and widening Coretta Street into a two-lane road to help with traffic in and out of the soccer fields.
Foster said the county already owns about 21 acres around the complex, including about 13 wooded acres along Coretta Street. That extra space, he said, could be used for potential improvements, though projects would likely still include additional land acquisition.
Any potential improvements in the area would also require a wetlands assessment as well as mitigation efforts for disruptions to the wetlands, Foster said. Those mitigation efforts, he said, could run about $15,000 for each acre impacted.
District 4 Supervisor Jeff Smith said he’d like to see additional discussions by the board of supervisors and the city council on improvements near the soccer complex sooner rather than later as the Parkview Development breaks ground.
“I’m a proponent of making sure that everyone that needs to know (is) shared this information, because the more information you can get out early. I think the more support you get going forward,” Smith said. “… So we want to get everybody on board. This is important. … This impacts the entire city and county.”
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