Plan for CSAH 27

riles neighborhood

Option to reroute road could put traffic close

to homes and MLC center as well as

reduce soccer fields

By RON LARSEN

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- County State Aid Highway 27 is probably best known as an alternate route to Sleepy Eye for those who want to avoid the more heavily traveled U.S. Highway 14.

However, it's now causing residents in the North Highland neighborhood, between Sunset and Lee avenues, to assume a battle stance as they face the prospect of an improved Highway 27 splitting their neighborhood in two.

That's because the Brown County Highway Department's preferred option (5a) in the planned re-routing of the highway as it enters New Ulm calls for the highway to follow the apparent extension of 5th North Street past its dead-end point at North Highland Avenue.

Only 16 miles in length, Highway 27 enters New Ulm on an alignment that is about parallel to Highway 14 to the north, transecting the proposed runway extension corridor on the south side of the city's airport. It dead-ends into North Highland Avenue near the Fifth North Street intersection.

The Brown County Highway Department has scheduled shoulder widening and regrading of the remaining 5.9 miles of unimproved roadway from County State Aid Highway 11 to North Highland Avenue in 2006 at a cost of $1.5 million. The surfacing of the highway is scheduled for the following year at a cost of $650,000.

This update will bring the remaining portion of the highway up to 10-ton limits, Stevens said. The majority of the highway from CSAH 11 west already has been improved.

Option 5a is the most logical and efficient way of flowing highway traffic onto 5th North Street, a through street which would carry that traffic to link up with North Broadway and U.S. Highway 14, according to County Engineer Wayne Stevens.

"Several options, including the highway's current route, had to be eliminated because they cross the city's airport runway extension area. It doesn't make sense to spend the kind of money the county will be spending on this project only to have it torn up later to make way for the airport extension," Stevens said, during a press briefing on the project.

That leaves two of the five main options in routing the highway into the city as being viable, and each of those options has an "a and b" option for determining the exact link-up point, Stevens explained.

While Option 5 features a sweeping curve for entering the city, Option 3 has more straight road and the shorter, more abrupt curves that go with it, AssiSTAnt . County Engineer Larrys Kilmer said.

"The sweeping curve that can be used with Option 5 is much better for traffic flow than Option 3."

However, that's little consolation to the residents who will be impacted by an improved highway going by their back doors, says Mark Navara, point person for the neighborhood's petition campaign to get Brown County to rethink its preferred option.

To date, all the property owners who live along Lee Avenue, most all residents of the Sunset Apartments and a number of individuals who are connected in one way or another with Martin Luther College's Early Childhood Learning Center have signed the petitions.

Stevens contends he has talked with "most of the property owners," and, to him, they didn't seem to have a problem with the preferred option.

"I don't know who he was talking to, but these (signed) petitions should indicate that we aren't happy about it," Navara said.

The college isn't happy with it, either, according to its spokesperson, Gary Sonnenberg.

"The proposed route would take out most of the playground, and we're required by the state to devote a specific amount of physical space to the playground. Not only that but the project would take part of the parking lot, reducing parking," Sonnenberg explained.

"We could remodel and add on to the building to concentrate the learning center at the south end and convert the north end of the building to dormitory rooms. Or we could relocate the center to another site. Either way, it's going to be very costly for the college, and how do we justify that? It probably would lead to the closing of the center."

You can add the New Ulm Soccer Association to the list of those concerned about the county's preferred re-routing. Charles Stephens, representing the association, told the Park and Recreation Commission that the county's preferred re-routing could decimate the soccer complex that now exists on MLC's athletic fields and District 88 land directly to the west of the neighborhood.

At the present time, there are four regulation-sized fields on the MLC property and 16 smaller fields for younger players on the adjoining school district land and the city's North Highland recreation area.

Stephens said the complex would be hard to replace because there isn't another open area of that size in the city.

However, what's most upsetting to those who live and work in the neighborhood is that the county isn't talking to them, Navara contended.

"The first we knew something was going on was when the stakes starting appearing (on the grassy area immediately west of the neighborhood) last year. Now, we're finding out the county has had it on their five-year construction plan for several years; we didn't know that. They should be having a hearing on it, shouldn't they?" Navara said.

A public hearing will be held in due course, but the county is waiting to learn whether the project will ever become a reality, Stevens said.

The project first appeared on the county's five-year road and bridge construction program for beginning construction in 2004. However, it's now been pushed back to 2006 and 2007.

"That's because the project calls for federal dollars so it has to be approved by the District 7 Area Transportation Partnership, but they approve only so many projects each year," Stevens explained.

"We don't know when the ATP will approve the project so we have to keep moving it back until they do."

As if those were not enough wrinkles as far as Highway 27's future is concerned, the county may face a battle with property owners if it pursues its present preferred option.

According to the City Engineer's office, the Fifth North extension past Highland has been vacated. So, what would have been public right-of-way is now private property.