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The Springfield News-Sun has brought you in-depth coverage of every key development in Urbana City Schools’ new building project.
Nearly a year after the Urbana City Schools passed a bond issue to build new schools, the district has unveiled its preliminary drawing for one of its new campuses.
The new kindergarten through middle school building off of Community Drive will house 1,4000 students, said Urbana School District Superintendent Charles Thiel.
The secondary entrance and extension of Boyce Street that the campus plan calls for has some residents in that area concerned.
“There’s a lot of nicer houses, and people pay good money to live around here,” said Landre Neer, who lives with her mother near the dead end of Boyce Street.
“And you know they want their quiet,” she added.
The Boyce Street entrance will be for buses and staff to reach the school, Thiel said. The main entrance for parents and other community members will be on Community Drive.
“Also our services for trash collection and other things, trucks and deliveries will come off of that street,” he said.
The two entrances will not be connected except for an emergency traffic lane that is to only be used in cases of need, Thiel said.
Initial proposals from the city to the school suggested the campus include a link to an extension of Washington Avenue, said Doug Crabill, community development manager for the city.
The district’s plan does not include that extension, Crabill said, but studies are being done so that the extension might be done in the future.
The city must look into the structure of parts of Boyce Street that might need updates to accommodate the traffic for the school, he added.
Residents in the Boyce Street area said they question if the road can handle the traffic, especially with the number of cars that park near the district’s athletic complex, which is currently at the end of the street.
“It already bothers people with all the traffic that’s around here currently just from the sports events,” Neer said.
As many as 20 buses a day are estimated to travel through the Boyce Street thoroughfare, according to a traffic study conducted by the district. More than 1,100 other vehicles are estimated to go in an out of the main entrance each day, the study states.
The proposal of the campus is still in the preliminary stage with the city, Crabill said. A planning meeting open to the public is scheduled for Oct. 28, but the city has not announced where the meeting will be held.
“We are looking at options for the amount of people we think will attend,” he said.
Thiel said it takes time to finalize plans between the city and school district.
“It’s a custom-built school, so it’s a long process,” he said.
Construction is slated to begin in the spring, Thiel said, with a hopeful completion by the beginning of the 2018-19 school year.
The school bond will also pay for a new high school, which will be built on the same land as the existing junior high and high schools, while preserving the iconic castle portion of that building.
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