Former Ordean resident and Duluth’s premiere landscape architect sent this rational email to Minnesota’s Secretary of Education, Alice Seagren. Its not surprising that the School District is desperate to avoid an Enviornmental Impact Study. For them its all about proving that no one can stop them. Its no longer about our children.
They broke a promise to families and pushed up the demolition of Ordean a year causing untold hardship. They are the authors of the wasted spending not the five taxpayers who are challenging their sweetheart contract with JCI in Court.
Read this and weep:
Ms.Seagren
This is in follow up to your note describing your offices’ limited time and personnel regarding school plan review. I am hopeful these comments regarding site issues could help your plan review staff in this review, and I hope you can appreciate these two years’ of review from inception until final plans. I have made these points prior to now, but with your final review of the Ordean plans, this seems a good time to summarize what are clearly very important points, many of them emphasizing your own MDE standards and recommendations for high schools. Please have anyone on your staff feel free to reply with comment or questions. Thank you sincerely, Kent G. Worley, Landscape Architect June 23, 2009
Plan Review – Ordean [now Middle] School
1 Off-site parking lot is shown across from the school on busy collector 40th Avenue East illustrates the fact that the 27 acre [11 useable acre excluding setbacks] site is inadequate in size in that it cannot accommodate its own facility needs]
2 Student drop/pick-up lane is immediately adjacent, and not separated ,from busy Collector 40th Avenue East .
3 Limited space for student drop lane is interrupted by two driveway entrances including one service/delivery driveway. Only a handful of parking spaces are provided while the Ordean E..A.W. traffic study projects 101 spaces needed over a short span of time. When some parents have to wait along this curb, even fewer spaces will be available.
4 Parents will continue to drop students on the opposite side from the school building on both arterial Superior Street and 40th Avenue East with students crossing each street where they are dropped. No sidewalk exists on this far side of Superior street to permit walking to a corner.
5 The bus drop/pick-up lane is dead-end causing two-way buses entering, stopping and leaving along with entering cars filling and emptying two parking lots connected to the bus lane presents obvious student hazard. Some parent cars will circulate thru this lane from 40th Avenue to exit onto Superior Street further compromizing bus drive safety needs. Good site planning separates the bus functions from all other traffic for obvious safety reasons.
6 This bus and parking lot driving lane completely separates he school from it’s athletic fields causing students and staff to cross this bus/vehicular driving lane. This identical pedestrian crossing condition will exist during field events forcing parents and kids of all ages to cross this driving lane.
7 This site does not have space for the normal school athletic facilities for any softball, second baseball field, practice field[s], soccer field[s], basketball, lacrosse, or tennis courts.
8 There is no expansion space for the school building along any of its perimeter.
9 The overall vehicular arrival/departure circulation patterns will draw school traffic thru the neighborhood streets including 41st Ave. E. , 42nd Ave. E , Gilliat Street and Luverne Streets. [this is because of 40th Ave. E. being used as arrival/departure which is, in turn due to the building location at the extreme east end of the site]
10 Location of the delivery/service receiving and garbage storage is located at the front of the building causing conflicts with student drop/pick up as well as conflict with several single family residential homes immediately from this area.
11 Substantially fewer parking spaces than normal high school, teacher, staff, visitor needs can be provided due to the substandard site size.[see item # 1] No parking expansion area exists.
12 Extraordinarily high retaining walls [to 25 ft. exposed heights] are shown to hold back earth between public street, public sidewalk and other recreational areas causing dangerous conditions due to close proximity to use-areas, and causing environmental damage by removal of steep ravine protecting trees and undergrowth. [again, an example of the small site causing compressed facilities, parking, building and complete loss of general on site open space]
13 This project requires obtaining eleven [11] variances from the city of Duluth , all of which deal with encroaching into established city zoning setback requirements – These, again, clearly illustrate the substandard size compared to MDE recommended site size for a high school.
14 Very obviously, this district did not follow MDE recommendations or process for site selection; otherwise these problems would have been avoided in the beginning.
Kent G. Worley, Landscape Architect
June 23, 2009
