Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Rolling Hills projects get resident input
Fayetteville officials hear about drainage, bike lanes
FAYETTEVILLE — Fayetteville residents participated in a public input session Monday on street and drainage improvements for Rolling Hills Drive.
The session was featured at Rolling Hills Baptist Church and was attended by Mayor Lioneld Jordan, city planners and key project representatives, who were available to answer questions for participants.
“We want to hear from the people,” Jordan said, explaining the meeting is a means to help the city find a way to ensure responsible development and safe passage along Rolling Hills Drive for vehicles, people and bikers in a manner that satisfies residents.
Rolling Hills Drive and its surrounding neighborhoods will have about $8.5 million in bond money put toward drainage and street improvements. The intersection with College Avenue will also get a share of the $10 million allocated for work along the U.S. 71B corridor.
Drainage improvements will consist of $5 million worth of work in the area of Missouri Creek. The area generally is bounded by Township Street to the south, Old Wire and Old Missouri roads to the east, and Sherwood Lane and Oaks Manor Drive to the west. The basin extends north where Missouri Creek enters Mud
Creek, north of Brookhaven Drive.
Peggy James attended the input session and shared how her home on Stanton Avenue is often impacted by water that flows from Woodbrook Drive and through her property.
“It’s almost taken down our chain-link fence a couple of times,” James said. “It’s that much water, running that fast.”
Chris Siebenmorgen, project engineer with Little Rock-based Garver Engineering, said a two-blocklong pipe that would run along Stanton Avenue to reroute water to a potential detention pond on Rolling Hills Drive south of Loxley Avenue would help alleviate that problem.
Bike NWA’s pilot project to put temporary barriers along bike routes on both sides of the street has garnered a plethora of mostly
“It’s almost taken down our chainlink fence a couple of times. It’s that much water, running that fast.” — Peggy James, about the impact of water to her property
negative feedback, city officials have said.
“It was relatively intense and they were relatively candid,” Jordan said.
The yearlong program began in November 2018 and will get taken down at the end of this month.
Car lanes were reduced from 11 feet to 10 feet wide. A 3-foot buffer was painted in between the car and bike lanes, with 4-inch-tall curb stops that look like little bumps along the road serving as a barrier. The bike lanes of a little more than 6 feet wide are slightly bigger than the painted lanes that were there before. Tall, thin plastic sticks called bollards are set where cars typically turn, and green paint marks higher-risk areas such as intersections.
Lynne Prater, owner of Sa- lon U at 908 E. Rolling Hills Drive, said she’s ready for the bollards and the reflective wheel stops that denote the bike path to go. The bike lanes narrow Rolling Hills in such a way that it makes it difficult to turn north onto College Avenue from Rolling Hills Drive, she said.
“Those little lane things are causing a backup,” Prater said, explaining that cars can’t access the right turn lane until just prior to the intersection.
The $3.5 million allocated for street improvements is for a permanent accommodation for pedestrians and bicycles.
Potential alternatives to the bike lanes include putting 8-foot side paths on each side of the road or using an existing sidewalk on one side of the road and creating a 10-foot-wide side path with two lanes on the other, said
Matt Mihalevich, Fayetteville trails coordinator.
“We hope that they would buy into it and be supportive,” Mihalevich said of the options. “This is their neighborhood and we want them to like their neighborhood.”
Conversations about development along Rolling Hills Drive are being had now, but Jordan said work to develop the street isn’t projected to begin until 2023.
An announcement on the development of the bike path alternative is pending based on information gathered from the public input session and online surveys that will be available on the City of Fayetteville website beginning today, Jordan said.
“I can’t tell you exactly what we are and aren’t going to do,” he said, committing to providing feedback to residents as soon as city staff members can responsibly say what the project will entail and how long it will take to complete.
“We don’t want to give people the impression that this is being built anytime soon,” Mihalevich said. “There’s still a lot of time.”