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It’s your paper! Friday, May 11, 2018 • Vol. 5, No. 3 • Fitchburg, WI • ConnectFitchburg.com • $1
Construction season is here
Inside Verona Road traffic shift expected this month
Road, development projects beginning around city
Page 3
SCOTT GIRARD Unified Newspaper Group
Bucky comes to Fitchburg Page 8
Business 23-year-old has built landscaping business with 17 employees Page 11
Sports
Photo by Kimberly Wethal
From left, Scott Seid, Sue Mach and Janine O’Rourke dig into the ground to plant a dogwood tree at the site of the Sunnyside Park off-leash area April 28. The park will open once the grass is established enough to handle traffic.
A ‘rockstar’ of a dog park Fitchburg nears completion of Sunnyside Park KIMBERLY WETHAL Unified Newspaper Group
Edgewood boys tennis favorites to win 10th straight conference title Page B1
Schools Verona Area middle schools switching to standards-based grading system Page B13 Oregon considers fall referendum Page B14
There’s a question Fitchburg Dog Park Advocates (FDPA) founder Jake Johnson gets asked almost every day over email, Facebook and in-person. “When will the dog park be open?” For that, he answers, it all depends on grass. “Wherever we did the grading, it’s dirt right now,” Johnson said. “Once we get the May rains, it’s going to be mud. We do not want a muddy park, we want established grass to hold to it. Dogs are going to run on it anyway, so we want good, established grass. “So that’s going to be our time keeper right now.” Fitchburg’s first dog park, located at the corner of Irish Lane and Fish Hatchery Road, is on the brink of becoming a reality after years of dreaming. There’s still work to be done on the 5.3-acre site – the grass has to grow in, remaining trees need to be planted and signage with donor recognition still needs to go up, Johnson said. The cost of what will be called Sunnyside Park has neared $100,000, with half coming from the city through collecting park dedication fees from developers who build in the city and half coming from the FDPA. The city has paid for the basic structural elements of the PRSRT STANDARD ECRWSS US POSTAGE
park – providing the land and parking lot, funding the fencing used to surround the two areas and grading the site. The FDPA has paid for everything else, including tree plantings done with assistance from the Fitchburg-Verona Rotary, picnic tables and bike racks. The ongoing maintenance will be split, with FDPA taking donations and, city agreeing to spend about 69 staff hours for maintenance, plus $1,000 in dog bags and $500 in general repairs annually. There have been donations, too – for example, a local Eagle Scout proposed building the kiosk that features the names of the donors and benches have been donated by owners in memory of their dogs who have passed away. “It’s a little way to remember (the dog),” Johnson said. The park will be sustainable, too, in more ways than one. In addition to running on its own solar-generated electricity and handpumped water, it will be funded by projected increased dog license fees. Johnson said the park’s concepts aren’t new – while planning it, he talked with parks departments who had existing dog parks to figure out what worked and what didn’t. “We didn’t reinvent the wheel,” he said. “There’s hundred of dog parks in Wisconsin. There’s thousands of dog parks in the United States. So we
took the best ideas.”
Filling a need Johnson, a former member of the City of Fitchburg Parks Commission, knew there was a demand for a dog park when he became an alder in 2015. The city had passed a leash law two months earlier, and a “small, but dedicated” group of citizens pushed hard for the idea, he said then. “When I was running for office years ago, this was the No. 1 thing people wanted,” he told the Star this month. After he took office and gathered support for the idea, he and the newly created FDPA narrowed down options for where to place the dog park. They drew up maps to see where surrounding dog parks in Madison and Verona were – and consequently, where the dog parks weren’t. “There’s a big empty spot, and it’s called Fitchburg,” he said. With the help of the city, 12 parcels on public land were considered. The Irish Lane location won out partly because it was in the middle of the city, Johnson said, but also because of the amount of work needed on the location, ease of traffic flow and population density. There was controversy – with questions about flooding and concerns
Turn to Dog park/Page 12
While Fitchburg residents near Verona Road are plenty used to orange traffic cones by now, other parts of the city will see construction picking up soon with the spring weather. That includes five roads being resurfaced, a new 45,000-square-foot building in the Commerce Park on the city’s southwest side and 393 apartment units in 11 new buildings. T h e r e ’s a l s o a n o t h e r project on Lacy Road, this time further to the east, as the city replaces the water main between Hwy. 14 and County Hwy. MM. That will begin later this month, interim public works director Bill Balke told the Star in an email. The rest of the work will be spread through the summer and into fall, and more could be on the way, depending on submissions for the next Plan Commission meeting due later this month, economic development director Mike Zimmerman told the Star, though he said he could not talk about them in detail because they had not been submitted yet. Whether those projects come to fruition, it should be a busy summer around the city.
Road work Last summer, two of the largest roads in the city were under major construction on Verona and Lacy roads. Next year, there could be a major project coming on Fish Hatchery Road. For 2018, as work continues on Verona Road, the rest of the areas affected will likely have a smaller effect on commuters through the city. The planned resurfacing projects are for Pembroke Street from Osmundsen Road to Raritan Road; Tami Trail from Barbar Drive to Cheryl Drive; Whalen Road
Turn to Construction/Page 13
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