Boardman Lake Ave: Road to Nowhere?

Plans for Boardman Lake Avenue, a road that would slice through Traverse City along Boardman Lake, might run into a roadblock amid opposition from city residents who want city money spent on existing roads – not new ones.

The road, intended to alleviate traffic on Union and Cass streets, has been under discussion since the 1990s. Many Old Town residents who live near Union and Cass say they’ve heard enough talk; it's time to build the road. But other downtown residents are complaining that the approval process has green-lit the new road before other options have been considered.

The city commission is soliciting public input at its April 25 study session. After that, the measure is likely to come before the planning commission on May 3. On May 9, the city commission will consider whether or not to purchase a critical piece of real estate for the project: the property near Lake Avenue on Eighth Street, which is currently home to Copy Central and would allow the new road to intersect with Eighth Street.

There are several alternatives in the works for how the avenue and its intersection would be designed, but the two-lane road would loosely follow the shore of Boardman Lake and then veer away to connect to Fourteenth Street.

Mayor Christopher Bzdok, who says he supports the idea to ease traffic in Old Town with a new road, believes the purchase option for the Copy Central property should be tabled until questions about the new avenue are explored.

Specifically: How would the new road affect north-south traffic and east-west traffic across town? How would it impact Eighth Street traffic? And, as many opponents of new roads claim, would the new road merely invite more traffic?

City businessman John Robert Williams says the plan is poorly thought out, the road isn’t needed, and adding an intersection to an already crowded section of Eighth Street makes no sense.

“My concern is that the infrastructure that we have here right now is not being maintained,” Williams says.

Old Town resident Janet Fleshman supports the new avenue, though she agrees it should be studied more carefully to make sure what is constructed will take traffic from Union and Cass. She said residents in her neighborhood believe the city should follow through on the city’s master plan, which calls for a road along Boardman Lake to relieve traffic on neighborhood streets.

“A lot of people who bought houses in this neighborhood looked at the master plan at the time,” Fleshman says.

Mark Crane, president of the Old Town Neighborhood Association, says Cass Street currently sees 13,000 car trips per day – similar to traffic volume on M-72 at the Turtle Creek Casino; the avenue is needed to divert east-west traffic through the city.

City commissioner Jim Carruthers hasn’t decided whether or not he supports the new avenue, but at a recent meeting to gather public comment about the proposal, Carruthers said he sympathized with residents who complained that, among the alternatives set out by planners, there was no “no road” option.

“Person after person kept raising their hands and saying, What about the ‘no road’ option?” Carruthers says. “We just have to decide: Do we want to build the road?”