Parking, Traffic Flow, Pedestrian Safety Focus of Memorial Plaza Upgrades
New sidewalks, streetlights and gazebo stairs will be among the many upgrades that will be incorporated into the south end of Pleasantville’s Memorial Plaza.
The work, which was started in late spring, will be completed next year. The project is intended to improve traffic flow, provide more room for parking and offer safe pedestrian walkways.
Improvements to Memorial Plaza are a result of the increased restaurant activity on Bedford Road and nearby retail requiring more parking spaces. Officials focused on the upgrades during last spring’s village budget deliberations.
At last week’s Pleasantville Village Board meeting, Superintendent of Public Works Jeff Econom updated the board on the project.
Reducing the center median that separates the two parking areas on Memorial Plaza will create an unspecified number of additional parking spaces, which would require the removal of five unhealthy trees. The trees are expected to be taken out in the next two weeks. Econom said four new trees will be planted, two of which will be at the south end of the plaza. Parallel parking spaces across the street will become angled spaces.
By this fall, the curb line around the gazebo in the middle of Memorial Plaza will be reconfigured and the crosswalk from the gazebo across Memorial Plaza will eventually connect to a new pedestrian walkway to Cooley Street as part of the ongoing 70 Memorial Plaza project construction.
New sidewalks will be added at the far end of the southern portion of Memorial Plaza and around the gazebo after its stairs are relocated. The Bee-Line bus stop will be closer to the gazebo, which can serve as a shelter for commuters waiting for the bus in inclement weather.
New lighting fixtures will be added on the median and the side of Memorial Plaza closest to the Metro-North train tracks in about three weeks. A new electric panel will be installed in a few weeks and the additional source of electricity will support two twin electric car charging stations. In previous meetings there were also suggestions for motor bike spaces and carports with solar panels.
The additional electrical capacity will also support parking meters and pay stations, making it easier for motorists to park and pay.
Econom said the project’s estimated cost is now $234,600, a nearly $50,000 increase from the village’s original $185,000 projection. Officials are considering moving funds from the Memorial Plaza civic space project to help offset the price of the work. Con Ed is also expected to reimburse the village $41,000 for the electrical upgrades.
The village is receiving about an 18 percent price reduction for the two charging stations, which cost $6,500 each. The cost will be a little more than $10,000.
“We are getting a lot more and we’re getting a bang for our buck in this project,” Econom said.
The upgrades and improvements are not related to the anticipated civic space work at the north end of the Memorial Plaza, which is dependent on the completion of the Manville Road Corridor Improvement project. The village is expected to go out to bid for the Manville Road improvements in the fall.
Pleasantville was awarded $1.6 million for the Manville Road work in 2017 by the state Department of Transportation (DOT). If contractors are available and bids for the project are acceptable to the village and the DOT, the work will move forward. The current estimate for the project is between $3 million and $4 million.
Abby is a local journalist who has reported on breaking news for more than 20 years. She currently covers community issues in The Examiner as a full-time reporter and has written for the paper since its inception in 2007. Read more from Abby’s editor-author bio here. Read Abbys’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/ab-lub2019/
