Renovations at Park Middle School includes installing a geothermal heating and cooling system. Wellfields for the system are being dug at the existing Cooper Park soccer field.
City officials have decided not to sell a swath of Cooper Park to Lincoln Public Schools as part of a major renovation of the adjacent Park Middle School, which includes a new, expanded soccer field for school and public use.
Instead, the city will grant an easement to the school district allowing it to use the land where the expanded soccer field will be built, along with a new access road that will divert traffic from the school parking lot to Sixth Street instead of Eighth Street.
The change comes in response to neighbors’ concerns that selling the land to LPS would be the beginning of more such land transfers over time and their worries that LPS would restrict public access to the soccer field.
As part of the easement, the city and school district will sign an interlocal agreement that will assure the public’s access to the soccer field during non-school hours. The agreement will likely also spell out that LPS is responsible for maintaining the soccer field and the wellfields it has dug underneath.
Justina Clark, president of the South Salt Creek Community Organization, said she and other residents still have concerns about the access road LPS plans to build from the parking lot across parkland to Sixth Street, but she’s very happy the city decided against the land sale.
“For me, that was a huge concern,” she said. “It was setting precedent.”
LPS is installing a geothermal heating-and-cooling system, along with a number of other updates to Park Middle School as part of a $32.4 million renovation of the school that was included in the $290 million bond issue passed by voters last year.
As part of that, LPS will put turf on the new, larger soccer field and build the driveway from the school parking lot just north of the park to Sixth Street, closing off the Eighth Street entrance to the lot.
The larger soccer field is part of the Cooper Park master plan and is used by many young people in the neighborhood. City officials saw the LPS plans as an opportunity to accomplish some of the things on the city’s park master plan.
But neighborhood residents, many of whom have lived in the area for decades, weren’t happy, and LPS stopped work on the soccer field while city officials arranged several meetings with the neighborhood organization.
That resulted in the switch from a land sale to an easement — one of the proposals shared with neighborhood residents at a Wednesday evening meeting.
City officials say they’ll also put up signs in both Spanish and English indicating when the field is open to the public, and they’ll add some fencing, with neighbors’ input, on the west and south sides of the field to keep balls from going into the street.
But residents’ concerns about the access road aren’t likely to change those plans. Those who attended Wednesday’s meeting let city officials know they still didn’t like the idea.
Judy Irvin, who’s lived near Seventh and D streets for 45 years, said Sixth Street already has heavy traffic — much of it semis from the businesses to the north, and employees of those businesses park along Sixth Street.
“It makes no sense to have kids coming and going out there,” she said. “I don’t know why all of a sudden they think they have to do this.”
City officials’ biggest concern with traffic along Eighth Street was that cars turning into the school parking lot conflicted with kids walking to school. The solution, based on a traffic study, was to create the access road. The speed limit along Sixth Street will be reduced to 20 mph before and after school, like other school zones.
In addition to closing off the parking lot entrance at Eighth Street, the west curb along the street will be moved back 8 feet, creating parallel parking along the park that won’t impede traffic.
Lynn Johnson, director of the City Parks and Recreation Department, said officials will encourage school pickup and drop-off using those spots along Eighth Street, which will reduce traffic along Sixth Street, as well as the number of kids having to cross Eighth Street.
Clark said if the city still wants to focus school pickup and drop-off on Eighth Street, she doesn’t understand why it’s creating the access road.
That road couldn’t be moved farther north because of grading issues, Johnson said. It will run just south of the soccer field, which is at a much lower grade than much of the rest of the park to the south.
The city plans to make the access road more pedestrian-friendly so that it appears less of a barrier from the rest of the park.
Some residents also disliked that the tennis courts were moved and replaced with one instead of two courts. City officials now suggest they could build one court and two smaller junior-sized courts that could also be used for pickleball, though it will result in the removal of 12 trees.
J.J. Yost, planning and facilities manager Parks and Rec, will meet next week with LPS officials to go over the feedback they heard and make final decisions.
Reach the writer at 402-473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.
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