Two of the five public access gates that the Greater Eastover Neighborhood Foundation received approval to install are in place.
Gates have been installed at Eastbourne Place near Ridgewood Road and at Quail Run Road at East Manor Drive and the sidewalk around each of those gates is complete.
Two gate fence posts are in place and a sidewalk to bypass each gate is in place at the Eastover Drive at Ridgewood Road location and at the Douglass Drive location that is between Ridgewood Road and Lake Circle.
The fence posts and a median are in place at the location on Lake Circle between Restbrook Place and Rhymes Place.
After years of meetings with city leaders and administrators, countless hours of planning and a good measure of persistence, Eastover leaders are starting to see their goal of erecting public access gates being achieved.
The completion of the gates will mark seven years since the neighborhood initiated early discussions about such, said Dana F. Robertson, executive director of the Greater Eastover Neighborhood Foundation.
The project to install gates in Eastover dates to the summer of 2015 when Robertson met with Robert Lee, the city’s traffic engineer, to look at each of the neighborhood’s entrances and exits and discuss concerns about installing gates at those locations. At that time, the city’s gating ordinance only allowed neighborhoods with one entrance to install a gate.
“My goal in meeting with Robert was to surmise how feasible it would be to get approval before approaching the city council about amending the ordinance,” Robertson said. “I wanted to understand what my obstacles were, such as street width requirements.”
In early 2016, Robertson met Jackson resident Sweyn Simrall, who was seeking approval to install a gate in the Northlake subdivision.
“She and I collaborated and began meeting with representatives from other neighborhoods such as Northpointe, Woodland Hills, Heatherwood and Rollingwood, who wanted to apply for gates,” Robertson said. “We also met with most of the council members at least once to ask for their support and to gain insight into their individual concerns.”
There were numerous meetings and public hearings on the gating ordinance with council members, neighborhood leaders and city representatives from all departments, Robertson said. The current gating ordinance, which has provisions intended to make the process more transparent, was approved in November 2020, and the time that took prolonged Eastover’s quest for gating.
“Eastover’s application was approved in June of 2021, six years after my initial meeting with the city engineer to discuss the viability of installing gates in Eastover,” Robertson said.
More than 80 percent of the residents of Eastover voted in favor of pursuing gates.
The city included several recommendations about the Eastover gates.
The gate location at Ridgewood Road and Eastover Drive is set back from the intersection on purpose, and the city recommended that it be left open at peak traffic times in order to accommodate the flow of vehicles.
The locations at Eastbourne Place at Ridgewood Road and also Douglass Drive between Ridgewood and Lake Circle are mid-street locations, which should help with traffic flow.
The gate location at Eastbourne Place, which is near Casey Elementary School, is required to be left open during school hours to facilitate school traffic flow.
The foundation agreed during a neighborhood meeting it would never seek to limit the Quail Ridge gate to one way in or out and tentatively agreed that the gate should be programmed to be open at peak times.
The foundation is paying for the installation and maintenance of each gate as is required by the city ordinance. Each gate will be equipped with a battery backup so it can operate in case of a power failure, will also be able to recognize sirens from a distance and preemptively open as a safety feature and will include a “walk-around” so that pedestrians do not have to walk through the gate.
The Eastover neighborhood will join these locations in northeast Jackson where there are gates:
- Old Canton Road at Banyan Drive
- Westbrook Road at Yucca Road
- Northpointe Parkway at Old Canton Road
- Northpointe Parkway at Plantation Boulevard
- Northpointe Drive at Waterford Drive
- North Cheryl Drive between 2206 N. Cheryl Drive and 4655 W. Cheryl Drive
- Heritage Hills Drive at Culleywood Drive
- Ridgewood Road and Petit Bois Street
- County Line Road and Avery Circle
- Old Canton Road at St. Andrews Drive
- Briarfield Drive mid-block
- North Lake Drive at Kristen Drive
- Old Canton Road at Rolling Meadows Drive
- Carolwood Drive between Briarwood Drive and Fairway Street
- Old Canton Road at Eastparke Drive
- Eastmont Place at Ridgewood Road
- Meadowbrook Road at the Meadowbrook Highlands
