Mail, parking among Munn rebuild issues

Residents along Munn Avenue between South Avenue and Route V in Maryville can expect about eight months of dust, noise and inconvenience beginning early next spring — but no one seems to be complaining very much.

That's probably because by next October those same residents will pull out of their driveways onto a brand-new concrete street complete with curbs, gutters and a new storm sewer, rather than the current stretch of cracked, pothole-ridden pavement.

About 30 area homeowners, along with Mayor Glenn Jonagan and a mixture of other city and Maryville R-II School district officials, gathered at the high school Wednesday evening for a public meeting regarding the proposed Munn Avenue reconstruction project.

City Manager Greg McDanel spoke during the surprisingly brief 40-minute session, as did engineers John Chamberlin and Matthew Kist of SK Design in Overland Park, Kan., which is designing the street rebuild.

"This project is long overdue, it's exciting, and it's going to be paid for with nearly $2 million capital improvement project money," said McDanel of the plan to reconstruct the heavily traveled street, which offers the only access to Maryville High School and is pounded five days a week throughout the school year by buses loaded with students.

Passed by Maryville voters in 2008, the half-cent capital improvements tax, often referred to as the CIP, has been used to fund several big-ticket projects, including reconstruction of parts of Main Street and 16the Street. CIP funds will also help finance the planned re-build of South Depot Street on the east side of town.

City officials estimate the tax will raise about $8 million dollars before it expires in 2018. Overall plans for spending much of the remainder of that money are already in place.

As for Munn Avenue, Chamberlin said engineering for the project is essentially complete, and that a request for bids from contractors should go out by the end of the year. The project has been split into three phases, moving from north to south, in order to keep minimize complications arising from both single and dual lane closings.

When completed, Munn will embrace a 22-foot-wide driving surface with adjoining five-foot-wide bicycle lanes, designated with paint, on each side. If the city can afford it,  there is also an alternate plan for a paved, eight-foot-wide biking and hiking path.

During the early phases of construction, the north end of South Munn will be closed completely, since affected homeowners, along with the Nazarene Church and Parkdale Manor nursing home, are accessible using alternate routes.

By the time crews reach Maryville High School, however, work will be limited to one lane or the other so that residents can still drive to their homes. This portion of the project will begin after school is out for the summer when traffic into MHS is sparse.

The final third of the work, which is to continue until around Oct. 15, will also be done one lane at a time in order to keep Munn open to local traffic. However, through-traffic will be barred and access to the high school will be open only from the north. Bus routes will be modified accordingly.

Most affected by construction will be a dozen or so homes across from the high school and accessible by no other street. In addition, these properties will temporarily lose their decorative brick mailbox stands and driveway aprons, which will have to be removed in order to install drainage pipes and other infrastructure.

Chamberlin said these homes will be served at times by makeshift gravel entryways, and that, at some point, residents will have to park across the street at the high school.

The same goes for mail. Maryville Postmaster Paul Eschbacher said a multiple-box unit, with individual keys for each resident, will serve the neighborhood until the street work is complete and the brick mailbox stands can be replaced.

McDanel said the lack of other streets in the area make a certain amount of inconvenience inevitable while construction continues.

"There is just not really a good way to build this project, but it needs to be done," he said.