After recently coming before Monongalia County Commission, Melissa Wiles, executive director of BOPARC, and Ryan Hess, of Mills Group, came before Morgantown City Council as a whole Tuesday to lay out the plan to renovate and expand the Morgantown Ice Arena.
BOPARC was part of the 2016 parks and trails levy, and, from this campaign, the board chose to focus on improvements to the arena.
City Manager Paul Brake said there is a funding gap identified, given the original levy does not cover the extent of the project.
“The devil’s in the details. We’ll save that for another day but mainly it’s bringing that to our attention so that it shows up on our radar screen,” said Brake.
Brake also said there is a component for parks and recreation funding enacted by council and that was a possibility for additional funds to be discussed.
Wiles said major renovations will begin in 2021.
Ron Justice of the Pedestrian Safety Partnership Core Group came before council to give updates about pedestrian issues in the city. He said since the committee came together 18 months ago, a lot of work has gone into addressing pedestrian safety.
The goal of the group is to address three primary issues inclusive of education, engineering and enforcement. Secondly, items were broken into tiers as to how the group would look at different projects it could undertake, said Justice.
In conjunction with the city, county, Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) and WVU, three primary projects were installed in the city.
One area addressed was near Pizza Al’s on Evansdale Campus, Campus Drive by Life Sciences and an area near Falling Run.
Justice said several things were experimented with that have not been implemented in Morgantown before. Rumble strip, flashing lights and additional markings were used.
The core group identified a top 10 list of areas they agreed need addressed. The three areas previously mentioned were places a rapid solution could arise. Long-term, Justice said Patteson Drive needs addressed but the group will have to work with the Division of Highways. Richwood Avenue was also an area of concern.
“There’s a lot of activity going on. In addition, we hosted a mini-conference here as part of the Federal Highway Program. That was very productive,” he said.
A bigger pedestrian and bicycle study is currently in the draft phase. By Dec. 1 Justice said it is hoped to be finalized.
In other news:
Keith Jackson and Mikylah Myers from WVU College of Creative Arts presented council with “Violins of Hope,” where violins from the Holocaust are presented to area schools and other community organizations. The collection will come to Morgantown in Nov. 2020.
Morgantown’s trick-or-treating will be moved to Nov. 2 from 6-8 p.m. due to inclement weather predicted on Halloween.
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