By Jason Emerson
After 18 months of planning and work, the Fenner Street sidewalk extension to the Googin Sports Complex is taking shape, with work likely to stretch through the summer.
The project will extend the current village sidewalk three-tenths of a mile from where it ends at the intersection of Fenner Road and Carriage Lane to the first driveway opposite the Googin complex parking lot. It is a joint endeavor by the Cazenovia village, town, central school district and Madison County, which began in earnest in mid-2016 (click here for previous story) with each organization responsible for particular aspects of the work.
The sidewalk is on the north side of the road, fronting Evergreen Cemetery, up past Brown Funeral Home and to the fields. There will be a crosswalk where the sidewalk crosses Fenner Road to access the sports complex.
The 2018 village portion of the project — creating the sidewalk and accompanying landscaping from Carriage Lane up to the village line just past Evergreen Cemetery — started in late April and will be done by the end of May.
Village public works crews, assisted by town highway department crews, have been pouring the cement sidewalk for a few weeks and, going at about 8 to 10 yards a day, are expected to complete the sidewalk by Friday, May 11, said Bill Carr, village public works administrator. Once the sidewalk is poured, village crews will complete the land grading and grass seeding on either side.
The new sidewalk section should be ready for pedestrian traffic by the week of May 29, he said.
With the village portion of the project completed, officials from the village, town and county will then meet to discuss the best way to complete the sidewalk from the village line to the Googin Sports Complex, Carr said.
Before the town can begin work on its half of the sidewalk, they must determine how best to handle a section in front of Brown Funeral Home where the landscape drops off, said Town Highway Superintendent Dean Slocum. “At this point I don’t have a schedule [for completion] until we figure how that place is going to be handled,” he said. “It’s probably not going to be done this summer because of the amount of work we have to do, but I don’t know at this point.”
After the sidewalk is completed, there is also planned to be a crosswalk installed from the new walkway across Fenner Road into the Googin Sports Complex. Exactly how that will be accomplished has yet to be determined, said Madison County Highway Superintendent Joe Wisinski.
While the 2016 plans called for a crosswalk with a flashing yellow sign, with the light will be activated by push button, Wisinski said he has no work orders scheduled to create such a crosswalk. He said that, likely, when county crews stripe Fenner Road later this year they will install crosswalk marking at Googin as well.
In the 18 months since the project began, the county has removed some trees along the sidewalk route, extended drainage structures, done embankment work and helped remove the old fence along Evergreen Cemetery. The town has assisted in the grading and excavation work along the route and also paid for half the new retaining wall between the cemetery and the sidewalk on which to set a new cemetery fence. The village paid for the other half of the retaining wall, erected the wall, rebuilt the cemetery fence and made the road shoulder wider where needed in order to pour the sidewalk.
The school district has contributed with in-kind labor assistance to the project wherever needed.
