August 4, 2011
Lane Ave. work in UA nearing completion By LIN RICE ThisWeek Community Newspapers
By Adam Cairns/ThisWeek
Members of Four Seasons Garden Club (front row, from left) are Sandy Sherill, Wilma Hagely, Jessie Ervin, Carmen Himes and Sue Eickelberg; (back row, from left) Sharon Cook, Jackie Cherry, Janie Jones, Jan Bieber and Marilyn Jennings. The group helps maintain Upper Arlington’s Tremont Fountain Park. The park was built in 1968, underwent renovation in 1992 for the bicentennial celebration and is currently scheduled for major upgrades in the fall.
Fountain Park slated for renovation By LIN RICE ThisWeek Community Newspapers
One of Upper Arlington’s smaller city parks will be receiving a facelift this fall. City staff members held a presentation last week at Tremont Fountain Park to unveil to neighbors and community members some of the changes they’ll soon see at the park, which is on the west side of Redding Road at the Northam Road intersection. Plans for the park’s renovation call for replacing the existing concrete plaza with a new paver plaza with steel benches, retrofitting several wooden park benches with recycled materials, adding new landscaping features and providing wheelchair access ramps to the new plaza, according to city horticulturist Lisa Metcalf. “We hope to get the bids out
Fountain Park upgrades
By Erin Holl/ThisWeek
for the project by the end of August, and when we start the plaza will be the first thing under construction,” Metcalf said. “We’ll
start by removing some of the plaza, using it as the base of the plaques and plants that we want new plaza.” to maintain, and then work on See PARK, page A2 the demolition of the existing
Most of the orange barrels dotting Lane Avenue for American Electric Power’s summer construction project should be removed before the start of the school year, city officials said last week. “(AEP) was working on the Tremont and Lane intersection last week, which means they’re moving west at a pretty good speed,” said Emma Speight, deputy city manager for community affairs. “They should be in the last Upper Arlington section starting this week. “We’re looking at Tremont west to Riverside Drive as the primary work for this week, and probably the week of Aug. 8.” AEP has been installing underground electric utility lines along most of the length of Lane Avenue in order to connect a substation west of the Scioto River with a substation at Ohio State University, Speight said. The project includes trenching work to install casing for the utility lines. Crews are about to start the process of pulling those cables through the casings. “Once AEP has finished that trenching, they will begin pulling cable through and splicing cables together,” she said. “They are going to be on the east end of Lane Avenue at Kenny Road any day now pulling cable from one vault to the next. As that work is being done there will be two lanes of traffic taken up at those manhole points.” The work being done on Lane Avenue between Tremont Road and Riverside Drive (Work Zone C) is expected to be completed during the week of Aug. 15 or
A closer look As crews near the intersection of Riverside Drive, Lane Avenue will be completely closed west of Leeds Road to allow the trenching work to curve north onto Riverside Drive.
shortly thereafter, unless AEP crews encounter areas of rock, according to a city news release. As crews approach the intersection of Riverside Drive, Lane Avenue will be completely closed west of Leeds Road to allow the trenching work to curve north onto Riverside Drive. For residents in this area, Speight said that refuse, recycling and yard waste collection will still take place on Mondays, although collection will take place between 6 and 7 a.m. Speight said the city is anticipating this entire stretch of Lane Avenue will be resurfaced in the spring. For the most part, city staff hasn’t been receiving much criticism from residents and the business community over the delays caused by construction on Lane Avenue, she said. “It’s been very quiet,” she said. “Once AEP moved west of the commercial district they really picked up speed. I think the residents have been seeing that progress on a daily basis, and we’ve been making an effort to get the word out on the work’s progression.” Regular updates on the roadwork can be found on the city website at www.uaoh.net and at www.pavingtheway.org.
Arrests made UA man accepted by Teach for America in theft from vehicles, house burglaries By LIN RICE
ThisWeek Community Newspapers
By LIN RICE
cars in the Upper Arlington and
ThisWeek Community Newspapers Worthington areas. Both were
Upper Arlington police have arrested two adults and six juveniles in connection with several residential burglaries and thefts from vehicles that occurred in July. On July 23, police arrested Wesley V. Guzman, 28, of Westerville, and Darla L. Taylor, 31, of Columbus, at the Swim and Racquet Club, 3500 Kenny Road, after receiving word that a man and woman were trying to enter vehicles parked in the club’s lot, according to a news release from the UAPD. Guzman and Taylor were found to be in possession of wallets, a cellphone and jewelry that had been reported stolen from
charged with theft and receiving stolen property, and were taken to the Franklin County Jail. Lt. Paul Schaumburg said some of the items had been reported as stolen from the York Country Club in Columbus earlier that day. Police investigators also arrested six juveniles on July 18, in connection with several residential burglaries that took place between July 14 and 17. Schaumburg said the juveniles range in age from 13 to 16. Detectives have prepared case files against them that have already been submitted to the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas. See ARRESTS, page A3
An Upper Arlington resident best known for his skills on the football field is trading in his pads for a suit and tie. Dan Crawford, a 2007 graduate of Upper Arlington High School, was recently selected into the 2011 corps of the Teach for America program, a national endeavor in which recent college graduates commit to teach for two years in urban or rural public schools. Crawford, who began teaching this week as part of the program, said he’s excited to have the opportunity to teach. “The program itself, they ask for a two-year commitment and recruit students coming out of their undergrad to go into some under-privileged communities across the country and teach in the schools,” Crawford said. “I’m just really excited about where I am, and being able to have the impact that I’ll hopefully have. “It’s exciting going into this coming right out of college,” he said, “having that kind of re-
Upper Arlington High School graduate Dan Crawford was recently selected to the 2011 corps of Teach for America. The program allows recent college graduates to commit to teach in urban and rural public schools. Crawford will be teaching in Chicago.
sponsibility and momentum.” Participation with Teach for America is fairly selective; of about 48,000 applicants this year, Crawford was one of 5,200 se-
lected to enter. He will spend Men. the next two years teaching Teach for America teachers freshman physics courses on the receive the standard school diswest side of Chicago, at the See TEACHER, page A2 Urban Prep Academy for Young
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