520 Church St. | 12-Story Residential [Under Construction]

[spenser1058]

1 minute ago, dwSouthEola said:

Stop signs will finally be placed at Osceola and Eola Drive !! They should be installed in the next 3 weeks.

This has proven that nothing is easy (and I certainly haven't made many friends in the process) but after asking for 2yrs, having numerous traffic studies done, spending hours in meetings with transportation engineering both at city hall and on site in the neighborhood.. it's all worth it to see our most requested issue get crossed off the list.  While nobody wants to give credit to the neighborhood association for working towards this on behalf of residents the end result is reward enough: Safer streets in South Eola.

Osceola and Eola are parallel. I assume we're talking about Church St.

[dwSouthEola]

Haha yeah, along E Church St

My last mtg on Jul 5th they said their last traffic study had been "close to qualifying" but no dice.. so I really hammered the point that the addition of the 520 building traffic would undeniably cross their threshold and the city should err on the side of caution not wait until the building is complete in 2020 as it is currently a dangerous situation. The conversation went on for a long time, they pushed back hard claiming the rules they have to follow wouldn't allow them to speculate future traffic (??) and that a study after 520's completion would be the next step.  Also when I reached out to Comm. Sheehan she said there was nothing she could do. In the end no matter what made them reconsider, this is a win.

[WAJAS]

6 minutes ago, dwSouthEola said:

Haha yeah, along E Church St

My last mtg on Jul 5th they said their last traffic study had been "close to qualifying" but no dice.. so I really hammered the point that the addition of the 520 building traffic would undeniably cross their threshold and the city should err on the side of caution not wait until the building is complete in 2020 as it is currently a dangerous situation. The conversation went on for a long time, they pushed back hard claiming the rules they have to follow wouldn't allow them to speculate future traffic (??) and that a study after 520's completion would be the next step.  Also when I reached out to Comm. Sheehan she said there was nothing she could do. In the end no matter what made them reconsider, this is a win.

I mean I guarantee you some of these two/three lane roads in the middle of nowhere didn’t hit the threshold, but they’re supposedly planning for the future there. I don’t see why they would plan for the future here.

[bqknight]

9 hours ago, dwSouthEola said:

Haha yeah, along E Church St

My last mtg on Jul 5th they said their last traffic study had been "close to qualifying" but no dice.. so I really hammered the point that the addition of the 520 building traffic would undeniably cross their threshold and the city should err on the side of caution not wait until the building is complete in 2020 as it is currently a dangerous situation. The conversation went on for a long time, they pushed back hard claiming the rules they have to follow wouldn't allow them to speculate future traffic (??) and that a study after 520's completion would be the next step.  Also when I reached out to Comm. Sheehan she said there was nothing she could do. In the end no matter what made them reconsider, this is a win.

WOOHOO!!! You have no idea how happy this makes me!

[codypet]

10 hours ago, WAJAS98 said:

I mean I guarantee you some of these two/three lane roads in the middle of nowhere didn’t hit the threshold, but they’re supposedly planning for the future there. I don’t see why they would plan for the future here.

We're designing a roundabout in the middle of nowhere because they're planning for future traffic.  Innovation Way out in BFE east of town is 4 lanes for future traffic.   That statement they made is just ridiculous.

 

[dwSouthEola]

3 hours ago, bqknight said:

WOOHOO!!! You have no idea how happy this makes me!

Me too, when I say we have brought this up at every meeting.. I mean every meeting, it could be about getting bricks fixed and I'll ask - who do you know that could help us get some stop signs ? Lol. Talking to people about crosswalks - this is going to be great, you know what else we *really* need ?? Stop signs. Have you heard about the 1 tree 1 person program ? What do you think about stop signs on E Church St ?

1 hour ago, codypet said:

We're designing a roundabout in the middle of nowhere because they're planning for future traffic.  Innovation Way out in BFE east of town is 4 lanes for future traffic.   That statement they made is just ridiculous.

 

Believe me, sitting across from two people making that statement felt like a Twin Peaks experience. I really didn't want to leave until they admitted 520's future impact but no matter how we discussed it they always circled back around to that statement. It's been kicking around for 2 1/2 months since then, and what was relayed to me yesterday said that "future impacts from 520 East were also a consideration" so it was part of their final justification ... and to me it's irrelevant who or what made them finally reconsider. As far as ridiculous statements coming from city meetings/personnel you wouldn't believe some of the things that have been said to me - or about me. I'm clearly not in for popularity it's all about results and so far the agenda I brought to that meeting has been carried out: Tree trimming at Osceola finally happened so you can see the crosswalk signs on both sides of the road, we got yellow curb by stop signs and hydrants, and now the stop signs. I'm beyond excited about this.

[nite owℓ]

On 9/20/2018 at 11:50 AM, dwSouthEola said:

Me too, when I say we have brought this up at every meeting.. I mean every meeting, it could be about getting bricks fixed and I'll ask - who do you know that could help us get some stop signs ? Lol. Talking to people about crosswalks - this is going to be great, you know what else we *really* need ?? Stop signs. Have you heard about the 1 tree 1 person program ? What do you think about stop signs on E Church St ?

Believe me, sitting across from two people making that statement felt like a Twin Peaks experience. I really didn't want to leave until they admitted 520's future impact but no matter how we discussed it they always circled back around to that statement. It's been kicking around for 2 1/2 months since then, and what was relayed to me yesterday said that "future impacts from 520 East were also a consideration" so it was part of their final justification ... and to me it's irrelevant who or what made them finally reconsider. As far as ridiculous statements coming from city meetings/personnel you wouldn't believe some of the things that have been said to me - or about me. I'm clearly not in for popularity it's all about results and so far the agenda I brought to that meeting has been carried out: Tree trimming at Osceola finally happened so you can see the crosswalk signs on both sides of the road, we got yellow curb by stop signs and hydrants, and now the stop signs. I'm beyond excited about this.

 

You must have the patience of a monk, kudos. It's almost like you have to twist someone's arm to do just the basics... it's incredibly irritating and mentally draining. It's like they have one job to do and they're getting real-world feedback... just effing do it lol.

I previously asked the city signal engineer to incorporate Leading Pedestrian Intervals (LPIs) at downtown pedestrian crosswalks, but they only implemented it at one of the crosswalks that I requested. It makes my stomach turn to continue to see people almost get run over in crosswalks when they have the right of way to cross the street. A downtown library volunteer was killed in a crosswalk later that month, but that hasn't changed anything either. The city likes to throw around the "Live, Work, Play" mantra without any regards for the safety of the people actually doing those things downtown. Again, just implementing the basics seems to be a problem for them.

 

Edited September 21, 2018 by nite owℓ

[gibby]

I wish the City would crack down on the car wash area for The Sanctuary.  They always block the sidewalk and I often see people walking out into Church Street.  The parking enforcement team could take care of that easily if they wanted to.  It's great news about the tree trimming at Osceola though!

[dwSouthEola]

17 minutes ago, nite owℓ said:

Again, just implementing the basics seems to be a problem for them.

 

1. That's terribly sad to hear about the library volunteer. 2. Even getting crosswalks has been an uphill battle.. like you said, basics seem to be a problem. We were told studies need to be done to see if there is enough foot traffic to warrant crosswalks. At first I thought that was odd, would it be a problem to have too many crosswalks ? But the curbs also need to be ADA compliant, ok but all of ours are. It's been years and still nothing. We've even had curbs rebuilt, re-graded so they are 110% ADA compliant, still no crosswalk stripes.

On Summerlin Ave every day I see people wait at Church St for speeding cars to either be spaced enough apart to run between OR in dead stop traffic when you can't see around cars walk halfway out in the street to see if they can go, many times being met with speeding cars. The nearest crosswalk to Church on Summerlin is at either Central or South. In what world does it make sense that a study has to again show that now *pedestrian* cross traffic meets their threshold to qualify for paint. They want people to be safe, right ?? I've got the receipts, every email and I can tell you every meeting who was there and what was said my memory is long.. the things that have been asked are simple, basics, for safety not vanity or ego. You'd think we were asking for the blood of a 1st born child.

[Jvest55]

Great work getting the stop signs approved, big kudos and a MUCH needed change. 

[Jernigan]

Have you reached out to your commissioner with the history?  I think it’s Sheehan 

[jrs2]

On 9/19/2018 at 9:38 PM, dwSouthEola said:

Stop signs will finally be placed at Osceola and Eola Drive !! They should be installed in the next 3 weeks.

This has proven that nothing is easy (and I certainly haven't made many friends in the process) but after asking for 2yrs, having numerous traffic studies done, spending hours in meetings with transportation engineering both at city hall and on site in the neighborhood.. it's all worth it to see our most requested issue get crossed off the list.  While nobody wants to give credit to the neighborhood association for working towards this on behalf of residents the end result is reward enough: Safer streets in South Eola.

Stopping isn’t the problem.  Stopping at a 4-way stop isn’t the problem.  Stopping at a 2-way stop is the problem.  That sign should state “2 WAY” and that should’ve been there the whole time to alert drivers approaching the stop sign that cross traffic isn’t stopping.

[IAmFloridaBorn]

[dwSouthEola]

The view this afternoon from Lake Lawsona.

[Jvest55]

10 hours ago, dwSouthEola said:

The view this afternoon from Lake Lawsona.

Nice composition, are you a photographer? 

[dwSouthEola]

3 hours ago, Jvest55 said:

Nice composition, are you a photographer? 

No I just walk around that lake every day. Lol In fact the picture looks a lot better on my computer but I had to scale it down to fit under 7MB, my phone takes pics at 9MB per shot and however it scaled it down it lost so much detail. Thanks though !

[jrs2]

On ‎9‎/‎25‎/‎2018 at 1:58 PM, dwSouthEola said:

No I just walk around that lake every day. Lol In fact the picture looks a lot better on my computer but I had to scale it down to fit under 7MB, my phone takes pics at 9MB per shot and however it scaled it down it lost so much detail. Thanks though !

how do you scale them down to under 7mb?

[dwSouthEola]

I'm on a Mac and just use "adjust size" in Preview. They open at 9MB and height/width is crazy like 56 x 27 inches so I cut the height/width down by a few inches, even though they are only slightly smaller all the detail is lost. Boooo

[dwSouthEola]

Some horizontal pieces in place today.

[bqknight]

There’s a second crane base put in now. 

[gibby]

The second crane is up.

[Jernigan]

[DreS0803]

35 minutes ago, Jernigan said:

Are they already putting the first floor plate!?!?

[bqknight]

18 minutes ago, DreS0803 said:

Are they already putting the first floor plate!?!?

Yup. They’re moving...

[DreS0803]

This thing is really going to make an impact on South Eola