The intersection at Northwest Riverside Boulevard, Galveston Avenue, and Northwest Tumalo Avenue is only two days into a two month construction closure, but area residents and business owners are already over it.
At the Sept. 4 Bend City Council meeting, the visitor’s section was filled with concerns about the project’s impact. Among the chief concerns: Increased traffic on State Street, pedestrian safety, limited access to Galveston Avenue businesses, and a lack of advance notice for those in the effected neighborhoods.
James McGuire, a State Street resident, said that while Wall Street was the intended detour, poorly placed signage is leading to a dramatic influx of traffic on his narrow street with few stop signs and lots of young children. He said he worries about his 5-year-old son, who has a tendency to follow stray balls into the street.
“The signage for the bridge [closure] is after you cross Wall Street. It would be more useful east of Wall Street,” the father said, as his two young children sat in the audience.
Chantal Strobel, another State Street resident, said she’s concerned about the safety of her two teenage daughters who are daily runners.
“Today my youngest almost got hit by a car as crossing Tumalo. She was so scared she came home crying and said she wasn’t going to run again,” Strobel said, adding that she had seen large semi trucks drive down the narrow street and didn’t feel safe as a pedestrian. “[Councilor] Sally Russel’s chickens and turkeys stopped traffic. They were more useful than the police today.”
Strobel, like McGuire and another neighbor who spoke, said she received no prior notice of the closure.
Jan Gifford, chair of the Old Bend Neighborhood Association, said that notices were sent to the local news media as well as to some residents and that the news was posted to the association’s website. Still, she acknowledged that even she was unaware Riverside Boulevard would closed at the same time.
“My pitch is: Go to the Old Bend neighborhood website, sign up,” Gifford said. “It’s going to be a long month. It’s much worse than we thought it would be.”
For Galveston Avenue business owners, it’s been a long — and slow — two days. Though the street is not closed, the detour is enough out of the way to discourage regular and drive-by customers.
Garret Wales, a partner with 10 Barrel Brewery, said he was shocked by the closure and the lack of communication with area business owners. The drop off in customers caused by the closure of the Galveston Avenue bridge, he said, is having an immediate and dramatic impact on his business.
“If the numbers from today and yesterday continue, we’ll have to lay off employees. Today…we sent home half of the staff. Twelve people didn’t make any money today,” Wales said. “Galveston is a ghost town right now; the streets are bare.”
Wales and Primal Cuts Meat Market owner Bryan Tremayne also said they received no notice of the planned closure — an oversight city staff confirmed.
“I think we had a swing and a miss on that front. We didn’t do a great job of reaching out to Galveston businesses that would be impacted,” said Assistant City Manager Jon Skidmore. “As a gesture to the business compunity, I’m going to stop at 10 Barrel after this meeting.”
Assistant City Engineer Jeff England defended the city’s efforts to notify the public — citing multiple public open houses and press releases about the project going back as far as March 14 — but acknowledged that no direct contact was made with Galveston businesses.
“There was advance warning road would be closed on Sept. 3. There’s been news media coverage,” England said. “I understand this is particularly difficult given its high profile location. It’s not fun for a while until the dust settles and people get used to the adjustments and the detours. Obviously we’re seeing that right now. I’m not suggesting concerns aren’t valid, just saying it’s fairly typical.”
England was receptive to the concerns and said he would re-evaluate the placement of signage and look into placing temporary stop signs on State Street. A less likely concession: opening one lane of traffic on the Galveston bridge. The window of opportunity between increased summer traffic and winter freezes is too small to allow for an extension of the project’s timeframe.
“We will revisit [notifications],” England said. “You always learn something new with every project. No matter what we do though, it’s always a pain to do a project like this.”
But Wales was unsatisfied, arguing that all the discussion of improved notification and shifting signage doesn’t address the commercial issues.
“There’s a lot of things I’d like to talk about, but this is an extremely time sensitive matter. Everyone there is running on small margins. It’s day to day. The idea of letting the dust settle and it being a pain — this is an issue of people losing their jobs,” Wales said. “We’re talking about residences worried about safety.”
Councilor Doug Knight suggested concerned citizens get together with England to discuss the matter further and implement changes as appropriate without the Council’s involvement.
In other traffic related concerns, one county resident who spends considerable time in the city said she was baffled by the prevalence of speeding drivers — even in school zones — and the dearth of police officers.
In response, Bend City Manager Eric King said that the Sept. 18 City Council meeting will include a presentation from Chief of Police Jeff Sale on a targeted enforcement effort to address speeding and crashes.
How has the Riverside/Galveston/Tumalo intersection closure impacted your day-to-day life?
This article appears in Sep 5-11, 2013.
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10 Barrel was packed last night – took 10 minutes to get a seat outside, as usual. Not sure what Garret Wales is on about.
The nice part about the closure is that you can actually cross Galveston now. But of course that’s because speeding drivers are a big problem in Bend. Everywhere around town, people routinely go 35 or 40 in 20 or 25 mph zones. Galveston, Newport, Franklin, etc.
The City did a “targeted enforcement action” at the Galveston crosswalks earlier this summer and absolutely NOTHING has changed. People still speed and people still don’t stop when they should.
We need the City to stop people from speeding through our neighborhoods. The City should use a strategy that actually works to deter speeding. I’m not sure what that strategy is, but that’s not my job. But why do they keep doing the same thing if it doesn’t work? Don’t let the empty promise of “targeted enforcement action” placate you – it may make a difference for a few days but ultimately it will not help. We have seen that over and over again in Bend.
I wondered the same thing. We tried to go to 10 Barrel last night, but ended up going elsewhere because the wait was so long.
One of the reasons the closure is so long is because the city agreed to build a better than average intersection.
Anyone who’s tried to pass through that intersection during the height of the summer floating season knows that it’s filled with kids with inner tubes whenever the sun is shining.
The new design features removal of the stop sign so cars can pass more easily. However, local residents were very concerned that this meant increased danger for pedestrians. Not only do floaters pass through here, but this is where the Deschutes River Trail crosses Galveston with all its walkers, bicyclists and tourists.
A compromise was reached. The city agreed to put in colored concrete, and other highly visible markings and features to protect pedestrians and bicyclists. However, those markings require more street work than just paint on asphalt. Paint wears off in just a few months with all the studded snow tires in the area.
So the street is closed in an effort to really do this project correctly. Cutting corners now will create long term safety issues (think years!) for all the kids who float the river, the tourists sightseeing through Bend, and all the residents who walk or ride their bikes through that intersection daily.
This matters to our long term identity. If the construction is having an impact on surrounding streets, let’s fix that. Maybe we need a police officer assigned to this area every day.
We should also all make an effort to patronize the Galveston businesses even though the bridge is closed. Walk to the Westside Bakery, take some Ida’s Cupcakes to your next potluck (you know everyone will love you for it!), pick up something yummy to grill at Primal Cuts, check out the new food carts by Hutch’s & Baked and ride your bike to 10 Barrel to celebrate it all.
Finally, we should make it as easy as we can for the construction team to get this project done ahead of schedule. Last I heard, they were just slightly ahead of schedule because some anticipated difficulties didn’t come up.
This project is about making Bend a better place in the long run. This is our only chance to get it right. Some people are bearing more of the burden in the short run for something that we’re all going to benefit from in the long run. Let’s give thanks, and support to those folks as much as possible, and get through this.
What is going on here? I use Galveston everyday to get to work and I’ve been seeing the road closure warning for the past 3 to 4 weeks. Coming to 10 Barrel or any other location on the West side from the East side of Bend takes way to long to go through downtown, Riverside to Galveston anyways. There are plenty of alternative routes to get to that bar. Regardless, I went by there last night and it was packed. Garret Wales talking about “laying people off” this morning on the radio because of a road closure is asinine (Its been closed a week). It is ridiculous this is even an issue. We all deal with road closures and construction, stop crying and blaming the city. Get creative to bring people in rather than having a defeatist attitude.
Pam Hardy said, “This project is about making Bend a better place in the long run. This is our only chance to get it right. Some people are bearing more of the burden in the short run for something that we’re all going to benefit from in the long run. Let’s give thanks, and support to those folks as much as possible, and get through this.”
Me likee the Pam.
“Not sure what Garret Wales is on about.”
He sees the nightly figures. He may be right: despite what customers have said (above), there may have been a serious drop-off in sales. But, hey man, sometimes when you are doing business in a city, you have to suck it up when the city focuses on making things better for the general populace. Hang in there, be as easy as you can on the staff, and wait it out. 10 Barrel started strong and seems to be very popular — surely y’alls can weather this. The end result looks to be a nicer city. That’s never a bad thing, for folk and for biz.