COLUMBIA — After nearly five years, the city is finally moving ahead with plans to remove the proposed extension of Cunningham Road from the Major Roadway Plan.
Following a request in May from Fourth Ward Councilman Jerry Wade to prepare an ordinance, the City Council approved a resolution Monday night requesting the Columbia Area Transportation Study Organization (CATSO) consider removing the Cunningham Road extension from its Major Roadway Plan. The Council also approved a motion to refer the request to a public hearing at the Planning and Zoning Commission. The Bicycle and Pedestrian Commission and the Parks and Recreation Commission will also review the request and give council their recommendations.
Because CATSO is a regional planning entity that also covers Boone County, it and the city both have Major Roadway Plans. But the city and CATSO try to coordinate changes in the two plans, Wade said in an interview Monday.
"This is a road where changes have made it unnecessary," Wade said at the meeting. "It's time to remove this road from the planned infrastructure and be done with it."
The proposed project would have extended Cunningham from Bray Avenue to Rollins Road through Bonnie View Park, but due to opposition from residents in 2003, no further action was taken. The Bonnie View Park land was donated to the city by F. Garland Russell in 1999, and when plans for the land's development began, so did much of the opposition to the extension.
In 2003, both the Planning and Zoning Commission and the Parks and Recreation Commission recommended the Cunningham extension be removed from the Major Roadway Plan. Many nearby residents based their opposition on Russell's will, which stated he wanted the land to remain a nature preserve.
"I think it's only fair that we keep the Russells' express intention to keep this land as undisturbed as possible," said Peter Yronwode, who attended Monday's meeting to express support for the removal of the extension from the plan.
During public comment, Sarah Lang of the Fairview Neighborhood Association cited a resolution by that group opposing the road extension from when the council was previously looking at the issue years ago. She also said the road would now be obsolete because the land is a park and is closed to further development.
In an interview Monday, Planning and Development Director Tim Teddy said his department is neither strongly in favor of nor strongly against the removal of the project. However, he said the department does feel there needs to be some sort of pedestrian route through the park between Rollins Road and Bray Avenue.
If CATSO does take the council's recommendation to reassess the need for the extension, the CATSO Coordinating Committee could do so as early as its next meeting on Aug. 28. The public is allowed to comment at those meetings.