With less than a year before the new consolidated school building in Athens is complete, City of Athens officials are nearly ready with traffic improvement plans in the area.

The consolidated school building will be located at the current City Park Elementary School campus and will bring together all four current elementary schools — City Park, Ingleside, North City and Westside. The structure will technically contain two schools — Athens Primary School (Pre-K through 2nd grade) and Athens Intermediate School (3rd through 5th grade).

Planning has been in the works for some time by Athens Public Works Director Ben Burchfield to make changes to the traffic flow in the area to accommodate increased usage and he noted during last week’s study session that those plans are almost ready to get public feedback on.

He said the plans will be revealed during a public forum that is expected to be held next week, on Aug. 25 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at White Street Market. After that tentatively scheduled one, more are expected to take place.

“It will give folks the opportunity to look at it, especially for folks on Keith Lane that are going to be impacted by this,” he said.

There was one important focus for Burchfield and Project Manager Kevin Helms as they got the plans together.

“What you’re looking at doesn’t involve taking anybody’s yards,” Burchfield said. “It’s been a task to dance around what we need to do without getting into that.”

He said there are three facets of focus with these plans: there will be new construction where there aren’t currently sidewalks; substandard sidewalks will be upgraded; and where there are existing sidewalks and room for it, there will be expansion into shared use paths.

Along with the added and altered sidewalks, he said some intersections will be affected as well.

The current intersection of Keith Lane and Crestway Drive will become a four-way stop. That is around the area of the 3rd through 5th grade wing of the school.

“Keith kind of dominates that intersection,” Burchfield said. “We want to make sure we’re giving everybody a chance to work their way around that intersection.”

Also along Keith Lane, he said there will be a crosswalk added to allow foot traffic from the middle school to the consolidated building and that pick-up traffic will be oriented toward that area.

“We’ll take everybody to the 3-5 side,” he said, adding there will be a system in place for parents with multiple elementary children as well as a student at the middle school. “The youngest child walks through the body of the school and we’ll have a crossing that goes right by that hill where the middle school is.”

He noted it’ll be armed with a “rapid flash beacon” that will be a step up from the pedestrian crossing signals in other parts of town.

“It’s not the cheapest option ... but the thought being this is going to be an extremely high volume crossing at least, you know, 2-1/2 to three hours per day,” he said. “We need to put in extra protection to make sure the kids and parents are safe.”

There will also be a change to the intersection of Elizabeth Street and McMinn Avenue, which runs along the Pre-K through 2nd grade wing.

“McMinn is going to dominate that intersection,” Burchfield said. “You’re probably going to see a lot of people coming from Elizabeth and we need to make sure they don’t get stuck at the stop sign and rot.”

To avoid that, he said the plan is to make a three-way stop at that intersection. He noted that Keith Lane is wide enough to install a left turn lane for people heading into the school.

Moving out from the school, Burchfield said there are plans for traffic signal improvements “all along Madison Avenue” as well as some on Cook Drive.

There will also be a traffic signal installed at the intersection of Highway 11 and Elizabeth Street.

“Elizabeth needs a signal, we’ve confirmed that and we’re going to work with TDOT (Tennessee Department of Transportation) on it,” he said. “Depending on what time of day you’re there, it’s dicey” to turn left onto or off of Elizabeth. He said that will also improve pedestrian safety when crossing over Elizabeth.

Other than that, he said he doesn’t expect to make other changes to Elizabeth as far as adding speed bumps or limiting parking on the side of the road.

“It’s really not appropriate to put speed bumps on a road with volume like that,” Burchfield said. “To restrict on-street parking on that one, you could do it but you’re opening Pandora’s box.”

It would lead, he theorized, to the expectation of limiting on-street parking in other areas of town that don’t need it.

After the public input sessions, Burchfield said the hope is to have the bidding out in September and be able to recommend a bid either in October or November. A portion of students are expected to be in the school by December of this year and it should be fully up and running by the start of school in August of 2023.

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