• Home
• News
• Sports
• AP
• Blogs
• Citizen News
• Regional News
• E-Edition
• Forums
• Services
• Forms
• Events
• Classifieds
• Homes
• Jobs
• Autos
• MarketplaceOhio

Alleyway in Kent to undergo makeover: City to bury utilities, change road surface

E-mail Story    |    Print Story    |    Comments    |   

By Matt Fredmonsky

Record-Courier staff writer

Come December, regular visitors to downtown Kent will hardly recognize the crumbling alleyway that connects South DePeyster and South Water streets and runs parallel to Erie and East Main streets.

The unnamed alleyway, officially referred to as Alley 4 by the city, is slated for a complete makeover beginning this summer.

The project remains more or less on the drawing board, but City Engineer Jim Bowling said the work will involve burying overhead utility lines to the extent possible, adding lighting and possibly stamped concrete or brick pavers.

“We want to make it a higher quality facility than a normal street,” he said. “We’re going to try to make the alley conducive to automobiles that use it, as well as pedestrians. We want both to feel safe (traveling) down that alley.”

For Paul Braden, whose Woodsy’s Music store abuts the alley, the reconstruction is a long time coming.

“I’m really happy to see that they’re doing it,” Braden said. “It’s really going to dress up this whole area. The alley definitely needs it.”

The work may inconvenience his customers for a few months, but the outcome will be well worth it.

“The alley just moves us forward in making the downtown more attractive,” Braden said.

The entire project is expected to cost about $550,000. The Ohio Public Works Commission is providing $270,000 toward the project. The work will, ideally, begin in August after the design is finished in June and the grant money becomes available July 1.

Bowling said the decision to improve the pedestrian aspect of the surface — by using stamped concrete or possibly unit pavers — has not yet been finalized. Either surface would alert people walking to the sound of a vehicle faster than pavement.

“In most streets you sort of separate the pedestrians from the vehicles,” Bowling said. “You either have a sidewalk or other paths off the side, with pedestrians in one spot and vehicles in the other. In this case, because of necessity, they have to have shared use of the space.”

The bigger design challenge, Bowling said, will be working with adjacent property owners as redevelopment efforts continue downtown.

“This needs to be a collaborative effort with the adjacent property owners,” he said. “Ideally in the future we’d like to see some of their businesses opening up to the alley to give it more of a feeling of pedestrian accessibility.”