Sinclair sidewalk project important for public safety, residents say

The City of Columbia held an interested parties meeting for a project that would build sidewalks along Sinclair Road Wednesday afternoon.

According to the city, the project will fill in the sidewalk gap along the east side of Sinclair Road south of Muirfield Drive.

Residents ABC 17 News spoke to at the meeting said the project is important for public safety.

“It’s a very narrow road and there are no streetlights out there so it will be good to have it,” Daniel Deschenes, who lives alongside the stretch where the new sidewalk would be built, said. “I would hate to see a kid walking along that road without a sidewalk, so this is absolutely a good thing for that.”

Allison Anderson, an engineering supervisor with the City of Columbia, said the new sidewalk will create a walking path from Muirfield Drive to the new middle school CPS is working to build. The new middle school is east of Sinclair Road and west of Chesterfield Drive.

“We are planning to build a five foot concrete wide sidewalk just to have a complete walking path between here [Muirfield Drive] and where the new middle school is going to go in,” Anderson said.

Ward 5 City Councilman Matt Pitzer said this is the first of a couple different projects along Sinclair Road over the next few years.

“It’s not a huge project, but it’s an important one in providing connection between both existing sidewalks and will be a big benefit to those neighborhoods,” he said.

The project expected to cost $78,000 and will be paid for through the capitol improvement sales tax. Construction is expected to begin this summer.