Emily Featherston
The Vestavia City City Council meeting on Monday, June 25, started off with the city manager’s report, where Jeff Downes discussed the contract with Gold’s Gym departing its location at the end of the month and clarified how the city plans to use it.
Mayor Ashley Curry said he’s gotten several questions about whether the city is going to be running a gym and the answer is no, they are just using the building during part of the community spaces process.
Downes said after the space is emptied, there will be a walk-through on Friday, June 29, to determine if the property is being returned to the city in an acceptable condition.
During the interim period when the design is taking place, a portion of the roughly 10,000-square-foot property will be the temporary home for some city employees that are being displaced through the community spaces process.
“They will not be located there permanently,” Downes said. The entirety of the Gold’s Gym space will also be utilized during this interim period for “periodic, temporary uses for recreation,” Downs said, and they will work with employees at the recreational center for sporadic programming, not maintained at normal hours. They also requested to do some programming in the pool space, in addition to using the rope swing, basketball courts and racket ball court.
The City Council also discussed traffic calming.
“We currently have 30 to 40 active studies going on from citizens who complain about traffic issues within our residential neighborhoods,” Downes said.
This proves to be a challenge, he said, because the city can’t keep up.
“We’re drowning in these number of complaints,” he said, and therefore they are proposing a traffic calming policy mirrored after several other cities across the state of Alabama. Downes proposed introducing the traffic calming policy in draft form to the council collectively, in addition to bringing several studies in hopes to collaborate so they can deal with “what is quickly becoming an overwhelming issue.” The city plans to present it in the third week of July.
Councilor Kimberly Cook asked if there would be any solutions for traffic calming in the near future, to which Downes said they have "put some wheels in motion."
The council also authorized a supplemental agreement for Neel-Schaffer for additional design work for Massey Road.
“This is the project that is tied for the award for being the most frustrating project in Vestavia Hills,” Downes said.
The project is going to require a revision to the design work, he explained, which ends up "frustrating" due to the time-consuming proposals and approvals process, especially in between local and federal levels OKing the project. ALDOT is saying the project will start somewhere between March and summer 2019, Downes said.
Other business included declaring 704 Rockbridge Road a weed and vegetation nuisance, and granting right of way use to Access Fiber Group Inc to install a fiber network.
Downes said it involves some existing fiber that is located within the Cahaba Heights area and was previously owned by Access Fiber Group and has been bought out by Crown Castle, an entity that has done business with the city before.
As a new owner of the existing fiber with the desires of extension, Crown Castle wants to formalize the franchise agreement, Downes said.
Other matters:
- Although there was disapproval by one Vestavia citizen, the council passed an ordinance discussed at length at last week’s work session. The resolution premits Downes to spend up to $4.8 million for professional services for the TCU-managed projects of the Community Spaces Plan.
- In addition, City Hall will be closed July 4.
- Finance Director Melvin Turner also presented the financial report for the month of May. The sales tax was trending considerably, better than projected, and “more than it did last year in the same period of time” he said.
