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Phase 2 of Barker Common project presented

OBSERVER Photo by Jo Ward Improvements to the park during phase one continue on.

The village of Fredonia is looking at possibly implementing some crosswalk enhancements as part of phase two of its Barker Common park project.

“These will allow pedestrians to cross more at 90 degree angles,” Joy Kuebler, landscape architect for the project, said during a Fredonia Village Board meeting this week. “Further up on Day Street we’re also looking at making a dedicated crosswalk right from the library entrance and across to what’s being built in the park as the children’s circle.”

The plan also includes the intersections at Temple Street being more prominent, laid out in concrete, the intersections at Church Street and Park Place.

The grant’s intention is to support walkability and a sense of pedestrian place in an automobile-centric world.

A more pedestrian-oriented area was also floated by Kuebler for Church Street and Park Place, due to their sizeable width.

“The width of Church Street is very wide from curb to curb. We have an interesting opportunity both in this instance to narrow the asphalt without impacting vehicular traffic, but to allow pedestrians to somewhat borrow the space that right now is empty, dead space in the middle of the road,” Kuebler said. “We’d have enough space to have both a dedicated parking lane, two lanes of traffic and then what we’re suggesting is to utilize a mountable curb that would allow parking on what’s essentially borrowed as pedestrian space all of the time and when there’s a festival or a farmers market then there would be the ability to restrict parking in order to reclaim it as pedestrian space.”

Other features that Kuebler shared were the created illusion of a brick street without the maintenance and the LED perimeter “gas lamps” that mimic the shimmer and shake of real gas fixtures.

“We would use reclaimed Medina Sandstone Cobble that would have been used in the area after the turn of the century in the space between the curb and the sidewalk on either side of the asphalt pavement on Temple Street,” Kuebler said.

As for the gas lamps, the architect’s group has located the historic photography of the park so as to match the original carriage design fixtures that were used in the Victorian era.

All and all the proposed budget for this leg of the project would be roughly $1.125 million with the preliminary schematic design estimating $1.25 million, placing the village right where it needs to be for the usage of the grant funds.

The project, once finalized will be going to bid in the fall with a planned spring construction date.

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