The Homeowners Association for Oakstone subdivision received an email from the City of Madison in notification of a “Public Involvement Meeting” regarding the planned extension to the Mill Creek Greenway. The meeting will be at 5:30 on Tuesday, June 14th in the council chambers of City Hall.
Included in this email was a link to an updated proposal. Even though this is a PDF file, I found it to behave strangely when I simply clicked on the link. You can use the following procedure to download the PDF file to your computer where you can zoom in and study it more carefully…
- Right-click the link and choose ‘Save Target As…”. (This command may be named differently on browsers other than Internet Explorer, but you should find a similar command on all browsers.)
- This should open up a “File Save” window to select a location to save the file. I suggest just placing it your desktop.
- Go to the file location and double-click on the PDF file icon to open it in Adobe Reader. (If you do not have Adobe Reader, you may download it here.)
I’ve only studied this for a few minutes, but I’d like to point out a few things that I notice…
- Notice how the greenway bypasses all Oakstone property to the north. The 5-6 acres of common land, including the pond, that are owned by Oakstone are unused and left wild. Those residents to live on that border have been very vocal in opposition to this greenway and seem to regard all of the territory on the west, north, and east edges as their private reserve. My take is that the City Engineer, Gary Chenowyth, chose to go completely around rather than try to fight these people.
- The only connection Oakstone will have to this greenway will be the connector recently built on Spotted Fawn road in the south eastern corner of Oakstone.
- This plan shows a connector to Park Meadow subdivision on Park Meadow Drive just north east of the playground. That is common land that has been cleared and is kept mowed, but no improvements have been erected.
- The plan shows the greenway connecting to Bridgefield Road in the future. That would allow access through Bridgefield to Mill Creek subdivision and Mill Creek, which comes out on Wall Triana across from the new Eastview extension. And, of course, the Eastview extension was built with multi-use paths on both sides!
IMO, this is a huge, huge step to improve livability in Madison. Take a few moments to pull up this area on Google maps and look at the satellite view. I think Oakstone has about 150 homes. Park Meadow has close to 300. Bridgefield, Mill Creek, and Bridgefield Reserve probably have 300-400 homes. Foxfield looks like it will have 200-300. And Millstone (south of Brownsferry down Balch) looks like it may have 200. You might also throw in the new neighborhood just across Brownsferry from Oakstone and the existing neighborhoods across Brownsferry from Park Meadow. This plan, if seen through all phases, would connect over 1000 homes to Mill Creek Elementary on the south and to Hughes Road (and, from there, much of the rest of Madison)!!!
I’m begging (yes, begging) everyone to come out and show support for this proposal. If you don’t, a very vocal minority of Oakstone residents may dominate the conversation. (They have at a couple of previous meetings.) I truly believe that Mayor Finley and City Engineer Chenowyth plan to see this through regardless of the Oakstone opposition. But we should be there to back them up. This is our chance!!! Put June 14th (5:30pm) on your calendar now!
