I attended the nearly 12 hour long appeal of the development at Harrison and Division. Considerable discussion was given to the concrete "Jersy" barrier that juts up out of the ground about 2 feet back from the steet along Divison. My question is: Does anyone know what that was for at one time or the history of why it was placed there?
It is too far from the steet to protect anyone on the Harrison sidewalk and a car would have to drive comepletey through the utility pole to hit the barrier.
Just wondering? posted by Steve Conway
As I recall around 12 years ago there was an old condemned building on that spot that was torn down, probably so it wouldn't fall down. If I remember right it was an old 2 story wooden garage or warehouse or something to that effect and the building covered most of the lot. It was amazing it was still standing actually, it was in terrible shape. This must have been around 1997? (all memory here). I think that barrier went up during the tear down and I had always figured it was placed to create a barrier between pedestrians and the hazardous building because at that time there was no sidewalk there. The sidewalk was added much more recently. There used to just be a trail along Division that cut along the property and next to that old building and it was pretty sketchy, right along the road. I remember when that sidewalk went in I thought it was a huge improvement to that intersection. So it was quite a safety hazard. As I recall, as soon as that building was demolished and the lot cleared it went up for sale and I have always been surprised that in all these years nobody has purchased the lot. That must have been around 1997 or 1998 because I distinctly remember classmates from Evergreen suggesting that lot would be a great park, and I graduated in 1998. I always thought it would be an awful place for a park because it is such a busy corner I didn't think it would be utilized well at all as a park. Back to your question of the purpose of the concrete barrier though, I think it is simply a leftover from the teardown of that old building because I first came to Oly in 1996 and I do recall that there was a brief time when that jersey barrier was not there at all. Hope that helps but that's the best I can recall. Jacob.
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