Best Neighborhood Project Resulting In Traffic Circles, Cool Art And Good Vibes
STAFF PICK: Keeling Neighborhood/Christmas in AprilWHEN TRAFFIC GETS dense on the main streets like Speedway, Grant Road and Stone Avenue, Tucson's transit traditionalists accelerate for the side streets. Some neighborhoods unfairly impacted, as the transportation bureaucrats say, are fighting back with roundabouts, or at least a Southwestern version of the British traffic circle.
The Keeling Neighborhood Association was looking into getting stop signs in the neighborhood to slow the crosstown traffic and stem the spate of car accidents, in the area bounded by Fort Lowell and Grant roads and First and Stone avenues. City officials suggested the traffic circles around the same time that Christmas in April adopted Keeling for its annual neighborhood-improvement project.
Through a variety of fundraising and coordinating efforts that would make any community organizer's head spin, a half-million dollars was raised to make repairs on 37 Keeling-area homes. Business, schools, community groups and individuals adopted homes, and most of the work took place on one day last April, says Christmas executive director Kyrin Alves. And as is traditional for Christmas-in-April projects, a "gateway" to the neighborhood was planned--in this case, the terrific traffic circles.
You must see them for yourself. Heading east from Stone Avenue (Remember: If you're driving, go slow! That's the point!), at Blacklidge Drive and Fontana Avenue, you'll see a scrap-metal cyclist atop a 15-foot pole about to topple over his handlebars with a face of reckless abandon (or terror?).
Continue east to see a second sculpture, an antithesis of the first. Where the other is wild and silly, this one is serene. At the corner of Blacklidge and Geronimo Avenue, a shallow dish sits as a humble offering to the sky atop sculpted metal, inlaid with what look like hundreds of colorful pieces of Italian mosaic and colored glass.
In all, there are four traffic circles in Keeling now; the other two are where Kelso Street crosses Fontana and Geronimo. Artist Geno Foushee did the cyclist and the little coyotes dancing around a tree; Roger Dale constructed the glass and metal sculptures on concrete bases. Both donated their work; Plants for the Southwest helped with the native landscape. And neighbors at each corner have agreed to drag hoses periodically to water.
Pima Community College's construction class planned and built the circles, which have proven as practical as they are aesthetic. "Our neighborhood used to be a regular traffic sieve for people on the main streets," says resident J.J. Moates. But where fender-benders and more serious accidents were once common, the neighborhood has not had a single crash since April.
--Susan Knight
