Homeowners in a leafy Macalester-Groveland neighborhood successfully rallied last year to block a St. Paul street project to add a series of sidewalks where none existed.

A few weeks later, the city informed property owners they had won their fight to stop the sidewalk construction. But they now may have a lengthy wait for street reconstruction — possibly decades.

As a result of their petition, St. Paul Public Works moved their corner of the city to the bottom of a long list of streets scheduled for full reconstructions and utility upgrades within the St. Paul Street Paving Program.

In other words, owners of 94 properties could wait decades for street reconstruction that was expected to begin this spring.

“Nothing will be done,” said St. Paul City Council Member Chris Tolbert. “They were made aware. We met with neighbors.”

Remember the St. Paul neighborhood fighting against sidewalks? They successfully achieved signatures from "at least 70% of property front footage." This is the requirement to avoid a street reconstruction with mandatory sidewalk installation. pic.twitter.com/IfCq81zyNt — Wedge LIVE!™ (@WedgeLIVE) January 7, 2019

Public Works officials were less than congratulatory.

“The department received a petition from the Woodlawn-Jefferson Phase II community on Dec. 14,” reads a recent notice to the neighborhood from city engineer Paul Kurtz. “The required 70 percent signatures (from impacted property owners) has been met.

“Per policy, this entire project area will move to the bottom of the Public Works Street Reconstruction Program,” Kurtz said. “Future street reconstruction is dependent on funding and this project is likely to be constructed decades from now.”

Woodlawn resident Elizabeth Miller on Tuesday said she’s resigned to the trade-off, which preserves 53 trees.

“That was the one downside,” Miller said. “We don’t feel good about that, but if that can save some of our trees, that’s what we have to do.”

Dan Hollihan, a retired lawyer who has lived on Woodlawn for 29 years, shared her sentiment.

“We’re going to be at the bottom of the to-do list. I’m quite OK with it,” Hollihan said. “The neighbors enjoy the unique quality of that small area.”

A PUSH FOR PEDESTRIANS

At City Hall, efforts to fill in some 330 miles of “missing” sidewalks across the city have been gathering momentum, on top of other pedestrian-minded safety improvements.

In 2018, the city installed new pedestrian medians along a half-mile stretch of Snelling Avenue from Randolph Avenue to Highland Parkway. Traffic bump-outs and marked crosswalks were installed along Grand Avenue between Hamline Avenue and Lexington Parkway.

Also last year, the city obtained a federal Safe Routes to School grant to construct sidewalks on “missing” blocks near Expo Elementary School, Holy Spirit Catholic School and Cretin-Derham High School.

More pedestrian improvements are to come.

On Feb. 8, the St. Paul Planning Commission will host a public hearing on the proposed St. Paul Pedestrian Plan, which makes filling in sidewalks and crosswalks and prioritizing pedestrians above vehicular travel an explicit city priority.

Full street reconstructions were expected to begin by this spring off Mount Curve Boulevard.

Instead, homeowners along Woodlawn, Stonebridge and Stanford streets circulated a petition last year to block the roadwork and utility upgrades on the basis that they did not want sidewalks interrupting street layouts dating to the late 1920s. Some of the utilities, including water piping, date back just as far.

“The main reason we didn’t want sidewalks is because they’d be cutting down so many trees — several dozen,” Miller said Tuesday.

They noted that Stonebridge in particular was once the site of a gorgeous mansion surrounded by picturesque open space. While the mansion is gone, the park-like ambiance remains in a part of the city they described as tree-lined, relatively secluded and offset.

The two-block stretch between St. Clair and Jefferson avenues follows a curved layout around the site of the former mansion.

Residents worried that sidewalks would break up the character and create a more street-like feel, inviting to car traffic. Some said that left as is, the road was just rough enough to deter car travel.

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“We don’t understand why we can’t have a third option of street and utility repairs and no sidewalks,” Miller said in a letter to media last year.

Shortly before Christmas, the petition-signers were informed that their plan worked and, with the support of 70 signers, or 74 percent of affected property owners, they had met the required threshold of signatures needed to stop the project.