| 10/7/2008 1:31:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article |
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Neighbors to the north petitioned city hall back during street improvement hearings. The Maplewood City Council voted Feb. 25 that Sterling St. is herby closed between Ripley and Larpenteur avenues and that the adjacent property owner (Hill-Murray Foundation) have the option to construct parking in the area of the closed road in the future, at the sole cost of the property owner. Neighbors to the south, including Joyce Selg, Bev Stickler and Anne Fosburgh, went door to door with a petition, signed by 235 people, to have Sterling St. reopened and finding many weren't aware during construction that the closure would be permanent. They were denied a hearing.
Linda Baumeister/Review |
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Sterling Street to remain closed
Derrick Knutson
Review staff
The section of Sterling Street between Larpenteur and Ripley avenues is currently closed and it will remain so following a decision by the Maplewood City Council last Monday.
During a public hearing, 15 residents spoke about the issue at the meeting, with three supporting the reopening of the street, 11 opposing it, and one man asking a general inquiry about the status of the road. Long-time homeowner Anne Fosburgh led the charge to convince the City Council to reconsider its decision to close this stretch of Sterling Street west of Hill-Murray High School.
Council member John Nephew said, in an interview with the Review, that the cost to maintain the road was high because it degrades quickly due to it's location in a wetland area, and that's why the city decided to close the road and construct a walking path.
Armed with a petition supporting the reopening of the road, she canvassed the area collecting signatures.
"235 people signed the petition to have it reopened," she said at the meeting. "Sterling Street was there before the residents moved in, so why now, all of a sudden, do they want it closed?"
Fosburgh added that she has used the road for a number of years and it is an inconvenience for her and other residents to have it closed.
In an interview after the meeting, she asserted that the majority of the petition signers were surprised to learn that the road was permanently close. They mistakenly thought it was just temporarily closed for resurfacing.
Fosburgh also was concerned about school busses no longer being able to use the road. Maplewood Police Chief David Thomalla addressed that issue at the meeting when he said that former police officer Robert Dollerschell monitored the area and found that there were few vehicles using it to go to school.
Divided opinions
Steve Recker, who lives on Sterling Street in Maplewood, wants to keep the road closed. He gave a brief presentation during the meeting describing what the area was like when he moved in a year and a half ago.
"Let's start with the gunshots - we can go with the drug deals, stolen cars, dumped cars and TVs being dumped with mercury spilling from them into the ecosystem."
He later added how he views the area to be after the closing of the road.
"Today, there is no trash there; it's beautiful, and obviously there is no speeding," he said. "There's no drug deals ... no needles on the side of the road."
Maplewood resident Bev Stickler was another one of the three who spoke in favor of reopening the road.
"I have lived here for 51 years, and I used that road almost every day," she told city officials. "I would think now that it's closed off that it is much more available to drugs and things like that with nobody driving by and seeing what's going on."
However, Maplewood resident James Simmer saw the road as a magnet for illegal garbage dumping prior to the closing.
"The entire road has been used as a trash heap, which is a shame because it's an excellent wetland on both sides," he said.
In order to reconsider the decision to close this portion of Sterling Street, the City Council needed to pass a motion to conduct a second public hearing. However, the general consensus of the council members was if they put it to another vote, it would not pass. Council Member Erik Hjelle told the crowd that it wasn't cost-effective for the city to maintain the road.
"The costs to maintain the road itself was horrible," he said at the meeting. "That is, if you can even call that a road."
Derrick Knutson can be reached at dknutson@lillienews.com (651) 748-7825.
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