As streets go, Thorn Street on the west side of Sturgeon Bay isn’t the longest, best-known or the most heavily traveled street in the city, but the City Council and the Board of Public Works before it, spent a good portion of three and a half hours talking about it Tuesday evening. The council eventually decided more input on the street issue was needed and action was put off for a couple of weeks. To be honest, there are a number of questions about the street that don’t seem to have definitive answers at this point. For instance, should curb and gutter be installed on the current segment of thorn street? The residents there don’t want it and have objected to it in person and on paper. They favor a plan in place that would redo the pavement, but nothing else. The Board of Public Works, put a decision on that segment of the street on the back burner during its meeting Tuesday. In the meantime, there is a plan to extend a new segment of Thorn Street as part of the marina view subdivision. In that case, the developer does not want to put in sidewalk, but has offered to create a path from the end of the cul-de-sac on his property to a proposed boardwalk along the water. The trouble is, for that to happen, the boardwalk would have to be completed in less than 15 years. Alderman Bob Schlicht said he was concerned that the city would be giving up its right to have the developer put in sidewalks in the hopes of access to a boardwalk that is far from a certainty…
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Mayor Thad Birmingham also was concerned that, down the road, there will be a critical need for sidewalk in the area and the bill will end up in the taxpayer’s laps…
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Staff was instructed to meet with the developer to get more definitive information on his wishes. In a couple of weeks, information on what to do with what was called old Thorn Street and new Thorn Street will be presented at a meeting of the city’s Board of Public Works.
