Jonesboro streets receiving pedestrian-friendly updates as new school year approaches

Jonesboro streets receiving pedestrian-friendly updates as new school year approaches

JONESBORO, Ark. (KAIT) - Streets near schools are getting updates across the city, but one of the biggest projects in the city’s long-term revenue bond plan is along Johnson Avenue, where a $1.4 million project has been underway.

Mayor Harold Copenhaver said this particular project will add a new turning lane and sidewalks, spanning west to the rest of the linked sidewalks towards Main Street, and east towards J-Town’s Grill and St. Bernards Behavioral Health Clinic.

Copenhaver said it’s part of expanding infrastructure that Arkansas State University already does so well on its campus across the street.

“You can see what the university does with their sidewalks,” Copenhaver said. “It’s just as important that the community also invest in sidewalks for our youth and for our students to have accessibility throughout the city of Jonesboro.”

Copenhaver said his main priority is safety, and a step in that process is to expand pedestrian walkways and make them less dangerous.

On Tuesday, the city council voted to make improvements to walkways along Caraway Road, which Copenhaver said it wasn’t hard to see that changes were necessary.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand,” Copenhaver said. “We can see where the people have been walking, and it’s not safe. And so, what we’re doing is creating that [safety].”

Cleanaway Restoration and Construction owner Shawn Easley has partnered with Stadium View Student Living for a number of years, and he agrees that the issues along the intersection of Johnson Avenue and University Loop were not hard to see.

“We’ve seen these kids walking in different areas and going, you know, through yards and grass and so on and so forth,” Easley said.

He said his daughter is graduated from Arkansas State, so he recognizes the need for a project like this and approves of it.

But he said the city could still improve in other areas.

Easley would rate the city’s safety infrastructure a “six out of 10,” and said that specific areas along Stadium Boulevard and near the Shoppes at Turtle Creek could use pedestrian overpasses, so he could avoid what he said could potentially turn into daily incidents.

“It’s really, really unsafe,” Easley said. “I mean, every day, about every day, I’m dodging somebody.”

Mayor Copenhaver said he encourages that feedback and anybody with opinions like Easley’s should share them with city hall and have a say in where their dollars go.

“I want our residents to say, ‘We feel that this might be an area that we could make it safer for our community,’” Copenhaver said.

Other improvements include an additional $4 million project in conjunction with the Arkansas Department of Transportation to put up an additional HAWK light—a light system that signals car to stop before pedestrian walkways—along with other improvements along the street that runs north of Arkansas State’s campus.

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