FR will add parking

FORT RECOVERY — Plans for additional parking at Fort Recovery Elementary/Middle School are taking shape.
Fort Recovery School Board selected a basic design for adding 55 parking spaces at the facility at a special board meeting Monday.
Board members agreed on a plan to add on to the west side of the current main parking lot on the south side of the building. It is estimated to cost $114,049, but that number will go up because of some modifications suggested Monday.
Ryan Lefeld, who works out of Choice One Engineering’s office in Portland, said he will make the requested changes to the plans and have them available for the board’s regular meeting March 8. If board members approve plans that night, he said the project could be ready for bidding by the end of the month with a goal to have a contractor selected by mid-April. If possible, the board would like construction to take place this summer.
The need to add more parking has been under discussion for several months to eliminate the need for visitors to park along the main driveway during larger events such as open houses and meet the teacher nights. It’s also part of an effort to create a better traffic pattern for dropping off and picking up students.
The need for more parking was one of the most frequent comments from village residents on a community survey last year, superintendent Justin Friks said.
“Typically when you park down that driveway toward Sharpsburg I would say there’s 30 or 35 cars there,” he added, noting that 55 spots should give the school more than enough room. “If we’re going to do it, let’s make sure we do it right and not short-change ourselves so we get into a situation where we add parking and then we still have cars parking down that driveway.”
Lefeld presented the board with two basic designs — one to add 55 parking spaces to the west of the current main lot and the other to add 64 spaces to the south.
Board members had also wondered about the possibility to expand the lot to the east, but Lefeld said that would not be cost effective.
“Knowing the layout of the land … especially with drainage, you’re going to have a lot of fill in this area being how low that sits,” he said. “There’s a drainage path through here, so you’re going to be talking about pipes going underneath there. It doesn’t seem to get as much benefit as what happens when you go west.”
The board favored the plan to add spaces to the west in part because it would help truck drivers who make deliveries to the school. The truck dock is on the school’s west side, leaving drivers with sharp turns in and out. Earlier this year, a truck driver struck a light pole while trying to navigate the lot.
“If you’ve ever driven back through there, especially with a semi, it’s a pretty tight turn,” said Firks.
The changes the board requested Monday include extending the sidewalk in front of the school along the full length of the lot, adding an island on the south end of the lot to create a dedicated turning lane for improved traffic flow and removing the current island on the east side of the lot.
Other versions of the plans that included adding a second driveway to Sharpsburg Road on the west side of the lot by utilizing either land already owned by the school or land it could attempt to purchase from Mary Help of Christians Catholic Church.
The board passed on the additional driveway, which would have added an extra $115,000 to $130,000 to the project’s cost, depending on its location. (The driveway on school property would be more expensive because of the need to cross a culvert near Sharpsburg Road, whereas the process of acquiring land from the church would extend the timeline of the project.)
“I’ve talked to some of our traffic folks in house. That second drive would be nice, but is it necessary? Probably not at this point,” said Lefeld. “So what we kind of see it as is it’s a great second phase … where we can start with the parking and when we get to that point when we want that second drive, we can make that leap then.”