In Umatilla, Pushback On Prospect Of Road Closure

    Not everyone is in favor of the City of Umatilla’s plan to close the intersection of Cassady Street and Lakeside Avenue behind city hall. The plan, several years in the discussion and recently approved for conceptual design, involves closing the street behind city hall and creating a new road that would run east and west just north of the Fox Den Country Inn and connecting to SR 19.
    The closure would allow for an expansion of green space between Umatilla City Hall and Cadwell Park, and according to city officials create a safer intersection and walking area for people coming and going from city hall.
    However, former council member Peter Tarby visited last Tuesday night’s meeting of the city council to voice displeasure with the idea.
    Tarby, who lives just south of city hall on Lakeside Avenue, said the new road plan would create a hardship for people in the area, as well as spend money on a problem that doesn’t exist.
    “There’s no reason to close this road,” Tarby said during the public comment period of the meeting. “I hope you will reconsider.”
    Tarby said the intersection behind city hall hasn’t seen a reported accident in many years, and that the new road configuration will ‘disrupt’ traffic in the area. If eventually completed, people traveling in the Lakeside Avenue area would face problems if they wished to eventually travel south on SR 19. Either they would come out onto SR 19 via the new road and be forced to turn north and finding a place to make a U-Turn, or they would have to drive south out of the neighborhood, around onto Trowell Avenue and then onto Cassady Street, where they would travel to the traffic signaled intersection of SR 19.
    “I don’t think it’s fair,” Tarby said of how the plan would impact residents in the area.
    A final decision has not been made on the project, though the council recently approved a staff plan to have preliminary drawings made of what the new road configuration could look like.