One of our neighbors has created a petition to create a pedestrian right-of-way to Target/Aldi accessible via Sunnyside. Currently, that portion is “walled-off” by the Truman parking garage and various fences.
The idea is to have the city create a passageway on the north or south of the Truman College parking garage that can be accessible to folks in the neighborhood. He states:
There is no pedestrian passage between Truman College and Wilson Yard, forcing long walking detours to either Wilson Avenue or Montrose Avenue for residents, students, staff, and shoppers. Wrap-up of construction makes this a perfect time to fix a problem created by the failure to adequately engage the surrounding community in the planning process.
Another neighbor adds:
“We talked some in our parks meetings about walking distance. Planners like to use the “5-minute walk” as the distance most people are willing to walk before they consider driving. IT works out to approximately 1/4 mile. There is a good article about it here.
I did some measuring to get a sense of the problems that the Wilson Yards development presents. I looked at the distance from the intersection of Sunnyside and Malden to the entrance to Target.
If Sunnyside continued on through and you could walk straight down the street to Target, the distance would be just under 1600 feet. A little outside of the quarter mile radius, but probably a distance that most people in the city are used to walking.
With the Truman garage in place and no easy way around it, the shortest distance is now over 3100 feet! That is surely an encouragement for a lot of people to drive to a place that they should be able to walk to.
If a pathway is created around the north side of the garage and under the L tracks, we could get the distance down to 2100 feet. A full 1000 feet closer than it currently is now.”
If you’re intrigued, you can sign the petition here. Google map with annotations can be found here.
Graceland-Wilson Neighbors Association 