Work started in the Donnelly shopping center parking lot off Governor Street on Wednesday, Aug. 27. Governor Street’s at the bottom, Bailey Avenue at the top, the new RVNA building is at right.
Work that started at the end of August will reconfigure the entrance-exit to the parking lot of the Donnelly shopping center at 21 Governor Street. The project will consolidate what are now three road cuts into one entrance-exit drive, directly across from Veterans Park School.
“It’s going to result in a much better configured parking lot,” said attorney Bob Jewell, who represents the Donnelly Trust, owner of the property.
“It’s going to make it so there’s one common entrance from Governor Street, which will make a lot more sense than what’s there now,” Mr. Jewell said.
The parking lot will have a wider center aisle that has two-way traffic. Several landscaped islands will be added, but the lot’s count of 137 parking spaces will remain.
A small portion of shopping center land — less than 0.2 acre that’s part of the grassy slope on the east side of the lot — was deeded to the neighboring 27 Governor Street property, to facilitate its sale to and redevelopment by the RVNA.
This led to the plans for adding the landscaped islands, which will maintain the property within a zoning regulation that says no more than 90% of the lot may be covered by buildings and paved area.
Both the shopping center and the office building sold to the RVNA had been owned by the Donnelly Trust.
Craig Studer of Studer Designs worked on the site plans for both properties.
“On 21 Governor all we did was realign the parking lot from angled parking to make it square — perpendicular and square to the building,” he said. “And that gave us more efficiency in the striping of the parking and allowed us to increase the green space.”
According to Town Planner Betty Brosius’s June 5 memorandum to the Planning and Zoning Commission, the 21 Governor Street property requires 86 parking space under town regulations, so the 137 spaces in the lot — unchanged after the reconfiguration — are plenty.
The 27 Governor Street property will have 60 spaces after development by the RVNA, which projects moving into its new facility there before December 2015.
As the result of concerns, the Parking Authority traffic patterns in the lot were closely reviewed.
“The Parking Authority has been working with the property owner, the Police Department, the first selectman and others over the past several months to improve the circulation within the lot, primarily for safety reasons,” Ms. Brosius wrote in a June memorandum to the commission.
“The Police Chief provided comments … and states that he supports the idea of the relocated, single entrance/exit to the lot off Governor Street suggested by the Parking Authority, primarily because of the provision for better sight distance for cars exiting the lot, and for better protection of the handicapped accessible space in front of the Bissell Pharmacy.”
In the end the commission approved a plan with two-way traffic allowed in all three traffic lanes through the parking lot. Ms. Brosius, the town planner, said worries about cars going too fast and causing accidents should be lessened by the closing of the entrance-exist at the end of that lane.
“…Since they are cutting off the current entry off Governor Street by the Bissell building, traffic in that lane will be slower, with less chance of collisions with cars pulling out of parking spaces in front of incoming traffic,” Ms. Brosius said this week.
“The issue with the one-way in front of Bissell’s had a lot to do with the fact that cars would come up the hill (westerly) on Governor Street and make a quick entrance into the lot, directly in front of Bissell’s,” she said. “They would often be met with cars backing out of spots in front of the store. The two-way traffic by cars using that lane as a ‘through-way’ was even more dangerous.
“With the main entry in the middle of the lot forcing cars to circle around toward Bissell’s, the issue of the ‘through’ traffic has been eliminated.”
The digging underway this week follows the plans that were approved.
“The configuration was carefully decided on by Planning and Zoning Commission, Parking Authority, and the applicant during the deliberations on RVNA project,” attorney Jewell said.
“We maintained the 137 spaces,” said Mr. Studer, the designer.
“There’s no loss of parking, it’s just a more efficient use of asphalt, and provision of green space.”