College Hill Neighborhood Association

A quiet moment on Edgar Street after a rainstorm

After many discussions at neighborhood association meetings and gatherings of residents with properties backing up to Edgar Street, College Hill will decide Monday night on a recommendation to the city about the future of the alley. The two major questions: whether to pave Edgar and how to reduce the speed and volume of cut-through traffic.

Residents of Tate Street whose properties back up to Edgar have expressed a majority, though non-unanimous, preference for paving the alley. To control runoff, a longstanding problem on Edgar, the city has suggested paving it in a concave manner, the opposite of the usual crowned design. Water would run from the sides of the street to existing drains in the middle. The roadway would not be widened.

A majority of Tate residents also have expressed a preference for keeping traffic going two ways. Options for controlling the amount and speed of traffic are limited because the city has rejected closing McGee Street at Edgar and/or blocking Edgar at the Sushi Republic parking lot to reduce traffic, citing the theoretical need for first responders to use the street. In keeping with the city’s general policy, it also has ruled out speed bumps or any other strategies to slow traffic. It has expressed an openness to one-way traffic.

The city’s perennial dithering about whether it’s actually responsible for the alley has been resolved, at least to the extent that it’s willing to commit explicitly to maintaining Edgar, which it has been doing occasionally for years anyway.

The regular monthly meeting of the CHNA will be Monday October 28, 7 p.m., at the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant, 501 S. Mendenhall Street, in the Fellowship Hall (enter from Mendenhall Street).