Junction Task Force Hears Report on Latest Outreach Meetings

Takoma Junction Task Force members who have organized outreach meetings with junction area residents reported how those meetings went to the full task force at its meeting March 23.

Task force members Roger Schlegel and Kay Daniels-Cohen reported on the results of the outreach meetings which were both held the evening of March 22. Schlegel said that he and task force member Megan Gallagher facilitated a meeting for Sycamore Avenue residents. Attendees listed “some major themes,” Schlegel said. Those themes are:

Fix the traffic: However, do not take away the Sycamore Avenue traffic light, because before that light was there, a flashing red light does not do the trick. But some ideas were mentioned about not letting traffic stop in the interim area. In addition, there were “lots of observations about how the box gets blocked during rush hour.” In terms of a roundabout, one person was in favor of testing a roundabout. While one person was against it because of pedestrian concerns, another person expressed concerns that if it works or not, it would still divide the community, making it “a hard director to go in.”

Pedestrian experience: Attendees believed that the pedestrian experience is lacking at the junction. There were “lots of nods to the idea of making it easier to cross” the street. In addition, another interesting idea is to take out the four parking spaces that are right along Carroll Avenue to create space for an area for outdoor seating, or something if there were a restaurant. In terms of parking, attendees were “clear that they did not want to see a net loss of parking regardless of what happens at the city lot.” But, there were also opinions that the city lot is never all that full and you could build something on part of it and still have plenty of parking.

Vitality: People want a great feeling of vitality to the area. Whether that was in terms of events, or a new anchor type of business, maybe one restaurant, but everyone is realistic about the market for a new restaurant, as well as the costs of installing new kitchens.

Aesthetics: An attendee said, the junction is “not a very attractive area right now,” and if it were more attractive, it would do better. The term “the scar” was used to describe everything on the south side of Carroll Avenue from the fire station to the Silver Spring Takoma Park Co-op (SSTP Co-op). The attendees were not saying that they want to see the auto-repair shop shut down—it was among the businesses they use and appreciate—but they did believe there was something unattractive about the fronts of businesses there. An idea to consider would be the front edge of the city lot as different from the back edge; maybe the front edge could be changed, whether with a structure or otherwise, to unify the south side of the junction aesthetically.

Daniels-Cohen, along with task force member Ellen Zavian, organized an outreach at the SS-Carroll Neighborhood Association meeting to talk about the junction. Daniels-Cohen said there were 24 attendees. “We had people from Grant, Carroll, Lincoln, Sherman, Sheridan and Hancock avenues, that’s most of the SS-Carroll Neighborhood,” she said. Most of the meeting “was about safety,” she added. Most of the attendees were walkers. They were “pedestrians, they were very concerned about the traffic, but from a pedestrian’s point of view, to be able to get across the street,” she said.

There were “a lot of issues about crosswalks,” she said. That there are no crosswalks painted anywhere on Carroll Avenue, or on Ethan Allen Avenue except to the island across from the SSTP Co-op. Because people really want crosswalks painted there, this “is a low hanging fruit issue” that does not involve retiming traffic lights, so the task force “can probably make that happen quickly,” she said.

There are some people who want the city lot on Carroll Avenue “to be family oriented” facility Daniels-Cohen said.

Also, task force member Jeff Trunzo said, “Vitality, is a large and repeated message, and folks would like to see the city lot encompass some sort of town square vision. Residents would like to see “a multi-purpose space, something that would be flexible for different things,” he said. However, residents do not want something that prohibits the use of the space for informal, infrequent or special events, he added, saying “there were all types of ideas around that, from playgrounds, to picnic tables, to cards to fairs, to music events. But the folks were adamant that the entire space not disappear into building and take that real option away.”

When asked if B.Y. Morrison Park was mentioned as a place for some of those social events, Trunzo said, it was, but so was the need for “improving access to B.Y. Morrison Park” which was describe as “a floating island that is hard to get to.”