No Parking proposed on Slade Lane curve

The Village of Mahomet proposed a no parking zone on westbound Slade Lane from Sweet Grass Drive to 345+ feet W from Sweet Grass Drive in the Ridge Creek Subdivision.

“We’ve had some informal conversations with folks out there that are concerned about the curve there and cars being parked on both sides of the street, and that location and it is kind of a bottleneck when you get in there and it’s hard to see around the curve,” Village Planner Abby Heckman said.

“We felt like making that side of the street no parking was reasonable considering there are no driveways, or constraints on most of the portion on the south side, which will still allow street parking in that area for the residents.”

Mayor Sean Widener wanted to know why the no parking zone would not continue to the west since the curve continued on.

Community Development Director Kelly Pfeifer said that the Village is conscience of the fact that when one side of the road is closed to parking, people use the other side of the road to park.

“Despite that, and with this is also kind of an open area, there are no driveways, that this particular one lends itself to this solution without the negative impacts of putting a bunch of cars in front of one particular house,” Pfeifer said. “You won’t normally see us bring no parking into residential streets.”

Seeing as there are no driveways in that area, Pfeifer said that she believes the number of cars parking on that street are from construction, people wanting to use the lake or not wanting to park in front of their own home. 

Board member David Johnson, who also drives a bus for the Mahomet-Seymour School District, said that there are often families who will park in their driveways, but will park extra cars on the street. 

“Once you’re around that curve, it really straightens out much, much more than what that curve is;  that’s a pretty congested area there.”

Widener said that the Village usually does not put no parking areas in residential areas because they are difficult to enforce. 

“It’s one of those things where I don’t want to put a burden on the Chief and his folks to enforce parking, but again that’s just a concern. If he’s not concerned with it, I guess I’m okay with it, but I just don’t open a can of worms up and look at every little curve in a residential neighborhood.”

Pfeifer said she’s not concerned.

“This is a very unusual setup with a detention basin next to, and rear lot lines of town home type lots that we don’t create like this anymore, next to one lot, that is a quarter pie shape,” she said. “We don’t have a duplicate situation, anywhere in town.” 

Widener said that the other concern was that a builder brought up the issue, not residents.

Pfeifer said that this area had been a concern for staff, also.

Board member Don Lynn said that there are similar issues in Thornewood with construction vehicles parked on both sides of the street. 

“It’s frankly my department’s job to get out there and to go to the sites and tell those workers to move to one side of the road,” Pfeifer said. “So I would believe that we’d been a little negligent this summer then and enforcing that, because those roads are not built for those. 

“Now, it is, under that circumstance, temporary. This area is not under construction right here. This is permanent build out except for the one lot. 

“So, this isn’t temporary construction traffic. This is operations of current residents living there. 

“But I will make note that we need to be better about looking at our new build areas and discussing and stopping to say to contractors to move on to one side of the street.

The item was moved to the July 28 consent agenda.