TOLEDO, Ohio — The Ohio Department of Transportation has a detailed plan to complete roadwork in South Toledo quickly, but with a summer festival approaching at the Catholic church in that neighborhood, traffic will have even more issues.
"We know we have challenges. We know that the ODOT construction has now basically limited our neighborhood to one entrance and that's Erie Street," said Arturo Quintero, Finance Committee Chair and Chair of the August Festival at St. Peter & Paul’s Catholic Church.
The festival will go on as planned, from Aug. 2 to 4.
As far as the new roadwork goes, this is a two-phase project. Once the first round of construction is complete, Newton Street between Erie Street and Broadway Street will open up from a one way to have traffic flowing in both directions permanently.
Crews are moving along, hoping to have that work done within 30 days.
After that's over, the next phase involves closing Logan Street between Broadway Street and Erie Street, and permanently cutting off access from Logan Street to I-75.
"That just is for safety of the ramp and those local, the traffic. It's kind of sketchy weaving in and out there, so part of this is to separate those streets from each other," Rebecca Dangelo, ODOT spokesperson, said.
For the festival, additional parking has been made available at the two large parking lots owned by Great Lakes Rentals on neighboring Logan Street.
The company generously reached out to their neighbors at St. Peter & Paul’s Catholic Church to help out.
The church will then shuttle people over in their bus. Those who want to walk the couple of blocks are welcome to do so.
"The city has helped us with signage, which has been really great, but other than that, they're limited into, I believe, what they can do," Quintero said.
Representatives from the church told WTOL they know they're going to suffer further losses before they get more access points into the neighborhood.
When everything is all said and done the idea is to have better, safer access to the neighborhood.