The Future of Church Street
You're heading up Church Street with the downtown skyline ahead, the sun bright overhead and heavy traffic moving in your direction. As you try to navigate a left-hand turn across three lanes, you worry that without a turning lane, even if you successfully negotiate a gap in oncoming traffic, you're likely to be hit from behind. Now you understand why the city of Greenville has long wanted to improve conditions along that stretch of road.
The project is coming to be at last after years of planning. It began as the Haynie-Sirrine Neighborhood Master Plan, a strategy to revitalize a neighborhood with a history that includes one of the first black communities within the city of Greenville. The city's plan, dated March 2002, detailed the need to turn Church Street from a barrier into a seam that could reconnect both sides of the Haynie-Sirrine neighborhood and reinvigorate the area with pedestrian activity.
Church Street, the plan explains, was completed in the 1950s. At the time, it was touted by engineers as a superhighway and criticized by a group of property owners as a cancer to surrounding residential areas.
Among the suggested improvements included in the master plan were a planted median in the center two lanes with median access and protected turn lanes at key locations, improved sidewalks separated from the curb by a planting strip, and lighting in the median for vehicles and along sidewalks for pedestrians. Benefits would include, "a mix of land uses, walkable urban environment and increased residential density within close proximity to downtown Greenville," the plan stated.
Funding for the project couldn't be found at the time, and conditions remained the same. A few years ago, the South Carolina Department of Transportation got involved, and found money for the $5.1 million project through state and federal funds. Work on the long awaited project has finally begun.
Dwayne Cooper, Greenville's City Engineer, describes it as a road diet. The six-lane section of Church Street that extends from Augusta Road to past University Ridge will be reduced to four lanes.
The diet will not mean giving up enhanced capability. "The six-lane section doesn't help capacity because the capacity is choked down by the Church Street bridge, which is only four lanes, and Mills Avenue, which is four lanes," Cooper says.
Some of that extra room created by the lane reductions will be used for the landscaped median, bicycle lanes, new sidewalks with a larger curb and better lighting. A new traffic light at Pearl Avenue and Haynie Street will be added with a pedestrian crossing. The area near Greenville County Square will be improved with a double turn lane to move traffic out of county offices at the end of the work day.
The goal is safety, with an added benefit of beauty and usability. "Safety is job one," Cooper says. "We feel that by enhancing pedestrian facilities, you get a higher factor of safety. We're also making it more safe for motorists because we're cutting off some of the left turn movements, which when you're coming up over University Ridge and the hill with bad sight distance create potential for rear end impact."
Cooper says that the area sees its share of people crossing Church Street on foot. "There is a fair amount of pedestrian traffic," he says. "I've seen them, and it's not safe."
A pre-construction conference on the project took place in late January, says Stephanie Amell, district construction engineer with the South Carolina Department of Transportation. The project's targeted completion date is June 2012.
Like the city, the Department of Transportation is working with safety in mind. "For us, it's mainly a safety project for the traveling public and for pedestrian traffic," Amell says.
Businesses and residents located along the Church Street corridor will be affected. Kay Thomas, one of the developers of The Brio Condominiums located at 1001 South Church Street, says improvements to the area were discussed back in 2004, when the developers, New City Development, met with the city.
Seven years later, she is eager to see the project completed. "We are ecstatic about the plans finally coming on line because we have been waiting for some time," she says. "It is going to benefit everyone in the area and be an enhancement for The Brio."
Of particular interest to Thomas is the traffic light coming to the Pearl Street intersection. "That has been a very accident prone intersection," she says.
Thomas says the enhanced sidewalks and new bike lanes will allow Brio residents to take fuller advantage of the shops and restaurants nearby. "This is going to add so much for the residents to be able to walk to Falls Park and go downtown to all the shops and up to Augusta Road. We are definitely ready," she says.
Benji McGaha, assistant manager of the Zaxby's restaurant located near County Square is ready, too. "It's hard to get into our store, so it should help us out tremendously," he says. "I think it'll be good for business."
Not everyone who manages a business along Church Street is happy to see change coming, however. Dr. Jeanne McDaniel, who has operated Chandler Chiropractic Clinic from a rented building on South Church Street for the past 21 years, is worried about access to her parking lot during construction and restricted traffic flow once changes are complete. "I think the access to my parking lot is going to be affected, and in turn that will affect my business," she says. "I may have to relocate."