Baker Street from Persell Middle School to Garfield Road is going to look a lot different by September.

Work will begin in earnest Thursday on the reconstruction of the intersection at Baker Street and Hazeltine Avenue. During a recent City Council meeting, Mark Roetzer, city public works director, reviewed plans for the reconstructed intersection as well as a narrowing of Baker Street. Roetzer had previously said work would begin once the school year ended.

Instead of the familiar ‘Y’ shaped intersection near Persell Middle School, the road will now have a ‘T’ shaped intersection.

“If you think about coming into town off of Baker turning on to Hazeltine, there’s a big wide radius turn there,” Roetzer said. “What we’re doing is we are turning that street, we’re narrowing that intersection and creating a ‘T’ intersection, so that way people, when they turn from Baker Street on Hazeltine, they have to slow down to make that turn.”

The project was designed by city Public Works engineers and will be paid for by Chautauqua County. DPW and city Board of Public Utilities crews will do utility work for about two weeks before Lakeshore Paving crews come in to start digging up the road. Cityview Avenue can be used to access Bergman Park during the construction, something Mayor Kim Ecklund stressed since the park hosts baseball games during the summer along with the World Series of Wheels car show and the city’s annual Labor Day Festival at the end of the summer.

Roetzer said there will be new crosswalks as well while the traffic light near the Baker Street entrance to Persell Middle School that has blinked yellow for years will be removed.

“The plan currently is to install a school crossing signs, but they have a push button and they basically flash after somebody pushes the button,” Roetzer said.

School children being hit while crossing Hazeltine Avenue prompted the intersection redesign. One of those incidents in December 2021 and other close calls prompted the Jamestown Public Schools District to increase the presence of staff outside the school during student drop-off and pick-up to make sure students could get across the busy street more safely while other safety measures were discussed.

Councilman Jeff Russell, R-At Large, said redesigning the intersection shouldn’t be taken to mean student safety has been addressed around Persell. Parent drop-off areas have been installed in prior years to remove street congestion, but it’s not uncommon to see them fill up quickly, with parents letting their children off in the plaza parking lot across Hazeltine Avenue or on side streets in the neighborhood.

“My concern in the school zone is you know we can do our job very well, but I see students on a daily basis not utilizing the crosswalks, not utilizing the lights and that’s where you know we’ve had a problem up here at the school,” Russell said. “We’ve had two kids hit. So we can do everything right, but I guess I would like to see the school officials up there be more diligent in making sure that the students are using designated areas so don’t have something catastrophic and a child get hit and actually killed in this area up there. We can only do so much.”

Traffic for those coming into Jamestown will be diverted to Orr Street to Garfield Road to Forest Avenue to Newland Avenue. Traffic downtown out of the city will be sent from Baker to Newland Avenue to Forest Avenue to Garfield Road. Roetzer said those detours are the best routes for truck traffic. Local traffic will be allowed in the area with access via side streets.Work is expected to end by Aug. 20.

While the city has talked previously about changes to the intersection of Baker Street and Hazeltine Avenue, there hadn’t been much public discussion of narrowing Baker Street from the city line to Hazeltine Avenue.

“Baker Street is also going from four lanes to three all the way from this intersection out of town to Howard, so it’s going to be two travel lanes with the turning lane and then bike lanes on the side very similar to what Washington Street is,” Roetzer said.