City gets mostly positive feedback on potential improvements to Star Lake
City officials tonight received mostly positive comments about plans for potential upgrades at Star Lake in the Green Valley community, according to consultants hired to assist with the plans.
More than 30 people attended a public involvement meeting at Green Valley Baptist Church from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.
There were some people who want to keep the park around the lake a small gathering place and are concerned that upgrades will attract more people from other areas, but many said they liked a lot of the ideas being proposed, said Patrick Waylor of Kelly Landscape Architects.
People seemed to like the idea of widening the sidewalk around the lake from 5 or 6 feet wide to at least 8 feet wide and to add some lighting, Waylor said.
Charles Maynard said when he moved to Green Valley 27 years ago, there were a lot of older people in the neighborhood.
“We’re starting to see Hoover go young, which is good,” Maynard said. “I think having a place for the community to gather is good and fixing the sidewalks and adding some lighting is an excellent idea.”
There is no lighting around the lake now, and ladies have to carry flashlights when they walk at night, he said. Adding lights will improve safety, he said.
Nicholas Brown, an engineer exploring lighting options, said some people who live right around the lake were concerned about having too much light shining onto their property, becoming a potential nuisance.
But he said once he explained that newer lighting options available today keep the light from spreading as far, people seemed more open to the idea.
He feels confident they can find a solution that will improve safety around the lake at night without annoying homeowners, he said.
The consultants had displays showing various kinds of light fixtures, including rustic, wooden fixtures and metal fixtures with a more contemporary look. Most people preferred the rustic, wooden fixtures, which match the wooden fence at the adjacent Hoover Country Club golf course, Waylor said.
City officials also have proposed to expand the number of parking spaces from 12 to about 38. Sketches showed an expansion of the current parking area with angled spaces as well as new parallel parking spaces around the lake.
The idea is to turn the two-way road around the lake into a one-way street, going counter-clockwise around the lake, which would allow room for the parallel parking spaces. However, some people were not keen on expanding the parking too much, so the plan possibly could be scaled back, Waylor said.
Some people like the ducks and geese that frequent the lake, but others do not and want the city to try to reduce the geese population. Flocks of geese frequently block the streets as they cross the road, he said.
Other ideas for improvement include creating a better area for food trucks to park, adding another pier or observation point for people to look out over the lake, and creating a water quality feature that traps some of the sediment that flows into the lake and keeps it from spreading so far.
Jayson Berger, who has lived in Hoover for 37 years and in Green Valley for 17 years, said Star Lake has been a fixture in his life. When he was in school, he ran around the lake as part of his cross-country practice, and now he takes his children there, he said.
“It used to be a hidden gem inside Hoover, but now with Google maps and GPSs, it’s never going to be a hidden gem again,” Berger said. “People can get to it easily now.”
Berger said he really likes the idea of making a one-way street around the lake.
“I think it’ll help with traffic congestion and it’ll probably make it a little bit safer,” he said. “We’ve need more parking for a long time, and widening the sidewalks will be a terrific benefit … It gets so congested during food truck Thursdays or any pretty day in the spring.”
Waylor said he believes the team of consultants and city officials can work together to make some improvements to the lake while at the same time respecting neighbors' wishes to maintain Star Lake as a community park. "It's not big enough to be a destination park like Veterans Park (off Valleydale Road)," he said.
Waylor said his consulting team and city officials will review all the written comments they receive and try to quantify what people want and don’t want. People still can email written comments to the city’s chief operations officer, Tim Westhoven, at westhovent@ci.hoover.al.us.