NE Iowa News

The Cresco City Council discussed plans for the city's crosswalks during a meeting held on March 6.

WHNK and Co. representatives Darren Sikkink and Scott Huenke presented a plan created by engineers and discussed the outcome of a recent neighborhood meeting they had held about the plan. Cresco is currently working on reconstructing all of its downtown crosswalks with an emphasis on making all of them, as well as curbs and ramps, ADA-compliant.

"One of the things we're trying to do is make as best as possible ADA or an accessible route for someone in a wheelchair or someone who's got a disability to get to the front doors of these local businesses," Sikkink said. "So some of the concerned areas are mid-block and some of those areas are kind of the most challenging as far as getting a compliant route for someone that is disabled. So the focus of the design was to keep the project of the ramps at the intersections of First, Second, and Third Street, and then there are ramps running north and south across North and South Park Place. It would be very difficult to add ramps that were compliant back in Mid-block. So, the discussion was then trying to focus on having handicapped spaces available near the intersections so that if you are disabled you have an immediate access point to the sidewalk to then get to up and down the businesses."

The project is expected to be wide-spanning and complex, with its five planned phases each taking approximately three weeks and the first phase set to launch in June. Cresco's downtown area will have all of its sidewalks redone, with property owners paying 90% of the sidewalk cost and 50% of the curb cost and the City paying the rest. While the sidewalks can be used 24 hours after being redone, the crosswalks cannot be driven over for eight days. Business access will also be hindered during certain project phases, which will be scheduled to be completed by November. All of the crosswalks will be removed and replaced with ADA-compliant gray concrete with a grade under 1.5 degrees. Several of the crosswalks are being either taken away or moved, which concerned several residents in attendance at the meeting as they worried about access for those with physical handicaps or mobility issues.

The Council asked questions following the presentation and stated that their plan for addressing the expected accessibility decrease was to add more handicapped parking spaces near the new crosswalks, wanting to make sure that residents still had full access to their city and that no litigation was directed at them. Several residents were still unhappy with the proposed plan, and the Council addressed their concerns, but they were still willing to move forward with the plan.