University Place, Fircrest City Councils to Meet Wednesday About Future of Mildred Corridor

University Place and Fircrest want to improve one of the busiest areas along their shared border: the Mildred Street corrirdor.

But the two sides could be far apart - at least according to one Fircrest City Councilman - on what each municipality will get in return.

The UP and Fircrest City Councils will conduct a joint meeting at 6 p.m., Wednesday at to discuss improvements to Mildred Street, which cars use to access popular businesses such as  and in University Place, as well as the recently opened in Fircrest.

One of the people at that meeting will be Hunter George, a Fircrest City Councilman who is a spokesman for Pierce County. He maintains a blog and actually posted a piece on the upcoming session:

"UP is preparing to apply for a $675,000 regional transportation grant to pay for design and right-of-way to improve Mildred from 19th to Regents with sidewalks, curb and gutter, landscaping, streetlights and bike lanes. UP is asking Fircrest to sign on as a project co-sponsor, which boosts the chances of winning the grant. They also want Fircrest to pony up $126,000 to help with the matching grant. (UP would apply for another grant later to pay for most of the $1.7 million cost of construction.)"

On the surface, it sounds like a good plan, right? Not so fast, Hunter writes. One of the biggest problems for his city is the project's proposed design:

"The biggest issue is this: while the project provides two travel lanes in each direction and a center turn lane, the two travel lanes on the Fircrest side get squeezed down to one lane in front of Sunrise Center (the shopping center with restaurants, the roller skating rink, dance studio and other businesses). Then it opens back up to two lanes after the shopping center.

So it would be just like it is today. Two lanes of travel on the UP side. And two lanes of travel on the Fircrest side until drivers merge into one lane, and then back to two when you get to the intersection at 19th. Given the expense of this project, maintaining that bottleneck on the Fircrest side is not a good longterm outcome.

UP says there’s not enough room to create a second lane of travel in front of Sunrise. That’s probably true on our side of the street. But what about their side?"

That bottleneck could be a deal killer, George writes. To date, much of the conversation has been between the two cities' respective staffs, which has created some frustration for elected leaders.

Depending on how discussions go Wednesday, the two cities could move closer to a middle ground, or the gulf between them could grow a lot farther than four lanes.