PHOTO BY MEGHAN ERKKINEN

Fife residents have been taking alternate routes while a portion of 70th Street is completely closed. The road will re-open Sept. 22.

70th Street closure means detours for Fife residents

By Meghan Erkkinen

The closure of a small section of 70th Street just south of Valley Avenue in Fife is leaving many residents searching for detours.

The only two other Fife streets that cross the railroad tracks are Freeman and Frank Albert roads, where many residents are experiencing backups. A Puyallup Tribe project along Levee Road also has some residents concerned about backups there.

Fife City Councilmember Glenn Hull, a resident of the Radiance development south of the railroad tracks, has already been fielding questions and complaints about the closure.

“As far as what I’ve heard in Radiance, it’s an inconvenience for people,” he said. “Obviously their first reaction is to complain about it, but I think if people were to think longer term, that’s where the benefit’s going to lie.”

The portion of 70th Street has been closed to all traffic since Sept. 5 so that construction crews can place a longer Wapato Creek culvert under the street in preparation for a 2009 road-widening project. Hull and his fellow council members voted in favor of a 17-day street closure instead of narrowing the road to one lane, with a couple full closures over weekends, for a longer period of time.

“I feel that by closing the road it will be less impact to our residents as opposed to a [longer period of] lane blockage,” Hull said. “That’s the least amount of impact, to close the road for 17 days.”

Dana Tondreau, a board member for the Radiance Homeowners Association, said one of the concerns she has heard from a lot of the residents in her development is over safety.

“They are really frustrated and most of the concern is centered around if there’s a safety issue – what’s the fire department going to do?” she said.

Residents are already concerned about how the closure of the railroad crossing at 54th Street affects response time to the neighborhood, she added. The tribal construction along Levee Road raises even more concern.

Other residents have expressed frustration over a perceived lack of communication between the city and residents. One of those residents is Sean Whalen, who addressed the city council about the issue.

“It really feels like in a community in the size of Fife…there could have been more communication on the closure and the impact of the closure on us in the community,” he said.

Whalen also expressed concern about the timing right around the beginning of the school year. As the father of a kindergartener, he said issues with changes to the bus route could cause problems for him and his first-time student.

“I don’t know that they really had done the math on the fact that the school buses can’t use the Levee to Frank Albert route,” Whalen said. “It really felt like one of those times when they made a decision and they didn’t really evaluate the impact that it will have on the community.”

Winston Marsh, vice pres-ident of the Radiance Home-owner’s Association, said he would have liked to have heard a little more from the city about impacts of the project. But he also said he thinks a lot of residents, though frustrated, see the benefits of the improvements.

“Ultimately the improvements are for us. We’re the ones who are going to benefit the most from this,” he said. “I realize growth hurts a little bit, but ultimately they’re necessary improvements.”

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