On Tuesday night during their regular meeting, the Northfield City council accepted the recommendations of city staff with regards to improvements needed to Lincoln Parkway and the surrounding areas. The improvements comprise a multifaceted $15 million plan that is expected to be phased in over several years.
The plan calls for mini roundabouts to be built at Lincoln Street and Cannon Valley Drive and at the Lincoln Street/Spring Street/Dresden Avenue intersections, narrower lanes throughout the Lincoln Street Corridor, curb extensions to reduce crossing distances, medians in certain areas, raised pedestrian crossings with flashing safety lights, bicycle lanes, and sidewalks.
The improvements have been identified as necessary over the past two years as local authorities have watched the traffic in front of the new Greenvale Park Elementary School with growing alarm. With the new Kraewood development about to become ready for residents to move in, the traffic situation will only become more complicated, which could jeopardize the safety of the elementary school students who walk and bike to school.
Improvements slated for 2024 include the flashing safety lights at Lincoln Street crossings, and a sidewalk that will be built on the South side of Lincoln as a part of the Kraewood development.
Northfield Mayor Rhonda Pownell said she is grateful to see those improvements, but seemed dismayed that more safety precautions cannot be taken at this time.
“We have to figure something out. We need long-term solutions to be able to make tweaks to designs that have been clearly shown to be in need of fixing. We’ve seen it through pictures of how things are set up, and how people get in and get out of the parking lot, and the visibility of drivers in both the morning in the afternoon. It’s clear that there needs to be some updates.”
The plans call for the next round of improvements to be made in 2028, and more will follow as the city budget allows.
Public encouraged to pay more attention to Comprehensive Plan project
The Northfield Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee will meet next week to go over some of the recent developments in the planning process like the draft of the plan’s vision statement. Members of the Planning Commission will then take the feedback they receive from the committee and proceed with the next steps for putting the plan together.
Betsey Buckheit, the Chair of the Northfield planning Commission, said one of those steps will be looking at trends in the marketplace, real estate and other areas. She said they will gather as much information together as they can in order to make some educated guesses about the business climate, housing needs and population growth over the next ten years. She said using some of these projections can be a lot like betting, but it is a necessary function of creating a long-term city plan.
Northfield Director of Community Development Jake Reilly pointed out that there is separate, but complimentary work happening at City Hall right now that will give more substance to the plan’s projections. For instance, he said, the housing studies from 2018 and 2021 are in the process of being updated. When the new data from those updates has been received it will be applied to the Comprehensive Plan.
Reilly said he sees all of the data coming together by late spring, and then the work of actually writing the plan will begin.
“I think everything should start coming together and coalesce into more of an action-oriented document in May, June and July. And then we’ll get that through the summer months when folks have a little, maybe more free time. I don’t know how that works. I never have free time.”
Meanwhile, Buckheit made another invitation to the public to engage in the planning process.
“I really hope the Community gets interested in this. If you care about what happens in Northfield, whether that’s how high your taxes are, or the kinds of things that get built, or how you can get around, this is the place where we do the most work to set the direction for that and the city decision making over the next 10 or 15 years.”
The Steering Committee will meet on Wednesday night at 7pm at City Hall.
Former Benson & Langehough Funeral Home holds significant memories for many
With the consolidation of the Bierman, Benson & Langehough Funeral Home operation into one building on the south end of Division Street, the former Benson & Langehough facility has been closed and sold. This is a common procedure in virtually every business, but perhaps a more sensitive one for a building that holds so many emotional memories for so many people in the Northfield community.
As a recognition of the building’s significance, something likened to a visitation will be held for the building on March 14th.
St. John’s Lutheran Church Associate Pastor Jonathan Davis said after conversations with people who became quite emotional when discussing the closing, it was suggested that a formal recognition of the building’s significance was in order.
“In the church world, if a church closes or changes purposes, we talk about decommissioning the church. And so, we wanted to do something similar. I’m mindful that not everyone in our community is maybe a person of faith or a churchgoer, but this place still holds lots of meaning for the people of Northfield.”
Built in 1955 by the Anderson family who operated the Anderson Funeral Home, it was purchased by Duane Benson in 1971, and became the Benson & Langehough Funeral Home in 2001, when the business was purchased by Andy and Suzanne Langehough. In 2015, Langehough partnered with Jim Bierman and the Bierman funeral home. Both Duane Benson and Jim Bierman passed away in 2022. While Langehough continues his work as a full-time funeral director, Bryce Beckstrand has now purchased a controlling interest in the business, and the decision has been made to operate out of one facility.
Langehough said he will miss the building. Not for the bricks and mortar, but for the memories.
“For me, it’s not so much the representation of the building. It’s the sharing that went on in that building at the time. The sharing of the grief and the love and the happiness and the things that I was privileged to see, which are really represented by the physical structure of that building.”
The Celebration of Thanksgiving will be held on March 14th from 4:30-6pm at the former Benson & Langehough Funeral home at the intersection of 4th and Washington Streets. Langehough said there will be a brief ceremony at 5pm. All members of the community will be welcome.
Jeff Johnson’s full conversation Andy Langehough and pastor Jonathan Davis can be heard here
Rich Larson is the KYMN News Director. Contact him at rich@kymnradio.net
