Poquonock Elementary to serve a double purpose

By: Antho­ny Zepperi 
July 24, 2020
The Wind­sor Journal

A ren­o­va­tion now under­way at Poquonock Ele­men­tary was con­ceived to improve traf­fic flow and park­ing spaces — but now has a new mis­sion dur­ing the Covid-19 times.

Accord­ing to Robert Jarvis, direc­tor of the Wind­sor Depart­ment of Pub­lic Works, the project includes relo­cat­ing the exist­ing play­ground area, now on Poquonock Avenue, to the open field south of the school building.

There is also a plan to con­struct a new park-ing area in the vicin­i­ty of the cur­rent play­ground that will pro­vide 50 staff park­ing spaces and to recon­fig­ure the exist­ing park­ing area, at the north­ern por­tion of the school site. It will also pro­vide a more effi- cient park­ing and small bus drop-off area.

Increas­ing social dis­tanc­ing and allow­ing high­er foot traf­fic and flows are con­sid­ered cru­cial in the effort to cre­ate a safer school envi­ron­ment dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, a for­tu­itous coin­ci­dence since the project start­ed for dif­fer­ent reasons.

Adam Kessler, assis­tant engi­neer, said that the plan was first con­ceived five years ago due to the increase in kids being dropped off and picked up by their guardians.

“Last decade, par­ents have been bring­ing kids to school and pick­ing them up near the bus drop off,” Kessler said.

Jarvis not­ed that this increase in car traf­fic gave rise to con­cerns about stu­dent safe­ty at the school’s north park­ing lot.

“There have been park­ing and traf­fic flow issues at the Poquonock Ele­men­tary School for many years,” Jarvis recalled. “There is lim­it­ed onsite park­ing for staff, fam­i­ly and vis­i­tors in the exist­ing lot on the north side of the school build­ing, adja­cent to Oxcart Drive.”

In addi­tion to inad­e­quate park­ing, the cur­rent onsite traf­fic flow in that north lot did not meet the needs of staff, vis­i­tors, par­ents, bus­es, and oth­er vehic- ular traf­fic, Jarvis com­ment­ed. In fact, it was fast becom­ing dangerous.

“The stu­dent drop-off and pick­up move­ments in that area cre­ate a con­flict point between bus­es, pas­sen­ger cars, and pedes­tri­ans,” Jarvis said. “The town’s engi­neer­ing staff col­lab- orat­ed with the Board of Edu­ca­tion staff to pre­pare a con­cept for expand­ing the park­ing area that will address the safe­ty and effi­cien­cy of traf­fic oper­a­tions at the school.”

Jarvis said that the new play­ground for the kids cur­rent­ly being built is also much safer than the pre­vi­ous one.

“The playscape has many var­ied fea­tures and ele­ments that are intend­ed to pro­vide improved acces­si­bil­i­ty for phys­i­cal­ly chal­lenged indi­vid­u­als,” Jarvis said.

Jarvis said that the engi­neer­ing team aimed to improv­ing oth­er aspects of the lot too.

“The new park­ing lot will also include storm drainage improve­ments and site light- ing,” Jarvis said. “We plan to mill off two inch­es of exist­ing pave­ment in the exist­ing park­ing lots on the north side of the build­ing and over­lay that with two inch­es of new pave­ment with the pave­ment line strip­ing clear­ly delin­eat­ing the park­ing areas and the traf­fic flow patterns.”

Kessler said that despite the pan­dem­ic putting a damper on town projects, ren­o­vat­ing Poquonock Ele­men­tary’s park­ing lot was con­sid­ered a main priority.

“The main con­sid­er­a­tion is the safe­ty of the stu­dents and staff,” Kessler said. “This project is iden­ti­fied as a need for the town.”

Kessler cal­cu­lat­ed that the work on the north side should be fin­ished in a few weeks, prob­a­bly around the mid­dle of August.