March update

View north: Before

Following an on site meeting with Mohammed Nuru and Sandra Zuniga of DPW the design for the SPUR project (now known as the Pennsylvania Railroad Garden) has been approved.

As the landowners, DPW has veto power on all designs of course, which overrides any community input, and also the power to add or alter features. In this instance DPW was very pleased with the plans but has stated we must reduce the number of bio-retention cells (BRCs) to 3, and double their individual size. Their placement along the street is to be determined, but you can see before and after pictures of these features in the images accompanying this article.

View north: BRC locations

This results in 3 fewer parking spots on the street and as a result we're reducing the plantings in some areas to mitigate that.

Prior to that meeting we also met with Ken Kortcamp and Rachel Kraai from the PUC who recommended we add a bulb-out at the top of the street to prevent traffic cutting the corner and running into cars parked on the east side of the street. We added that feature to the plans too.

Lastly we met with our construction engineer, Mike Glynn, today. he has secured the steel beams for the project and is working on another project nearby, so we hope he can do his part at our new project while his machinery is in the area. We tentatively set an April 1st start date, as a joke!

View north: BRC plantings

We are getting firm quotes on the materials we need for Phase 1 of the project, such as boulders, trees, plants and so on.  Do you want to be involved? We need help! Please contact us right away if you're interested in being a part of this project.