A drawing shows West 215th Street vacated with Messiah Lutheran’s campus extended to its newly purchased building. Below: Architect’s drawing of the West 215th Street building after renovations. (Drawings courtesy of Messiah Lutheran Church)

School expansion proposal draws opponents
By Kevin Kelley
Fairview Park
Published Sept. 12, 2007

A proposal by Messiah Lutheran Church to close off part of West 215th Street near Lorain Road has drawn the objection of neighbors.

In December, the church purchased a two-story medical building located at 4402 West 215th Street, just west of the church campus, for $775,000. The building will be renovated to house Messiah School’s sixth, seventh and eighth grade classrooms as well as art and science labs.

The school wants to close off about 120 feet of West 215th Street so children can travel back and forth between the renovated building and the main campus without having to cross traffic.

“The main benefit is kids will have a safe walkway,” said Bob Kreps, co-chair of Messiah Lutheran’s building committee. “They won’t have to walk through traffic between the two buildings.”

In an Aug. 15 letter to Mayor Eileen Patton and City Council, the Rev. Jerome E. Burce, senior pastor of Messiah Lutheran, formally requested that the street be vacated.

Architect’s drawing of the West 215th Street building after renovations. (Drawings courtesy of Messiah Lutheran Church)

“When (the renovation of the building is) completed, our students will begin using both buildings which will require them to walk between the buildings,” Burce wrote. “Vehicular traffic on West 215th Street would pose a serious threat to their safety. Vacation...is necessary to protect them from serious injury or tragic death, and would not be unduly burdensome to others.”

An ordinance that would vacate a portion of West 215th Street was placed on first reading at City Council’s Sept. 4 regular meeting.

At the same meeting, West 215th Street residents Dave and Wilda Michel presented the Patton administration and council members with petitions signed by residents opposed to the vacation of the street.

The petitions were signed by 135 area residents, Wilda Michel said.

She told West Life that she’s concerned about having access to Lorain Road blocked off and other traffic problems.

“It’s going to be a very large inconvenience to go around the block,” he said.

Vacating a portion of West 215th Street would leave only one access point south of Lorain Road between West 210 and 220th streets, Michel said. That would be Fairview Parkway, which forks into West 213 and 214th street just northwest of Fairview High School.

“I think that the brunt of the traffic will go down 214 to the Parkway,” she said.

Michel also said other residents expressed concerns that emergency vehicles would be delayed trying to get to residences south of Lorain Road.

“People have lots of different concerns,” she said.

Michel, who lives two houses down from the church, said that she was also concerned that cars picking up students would jam up in front of her house.

But Kreps said that won’t happen.

“There will be gates preventing cars from using West 215th as a pick-up and drop-off point,” Kreps said. Cars picking up students will use a Lorain Road entry point at the eastern side of the main school building, he said.

Five buses that transport some of the school’s approximately 220 students will continue to use West 215th Street, Kreps said.

Kreps said that the claims that residents will not be able to walk to Lorain Road, to get to a bus stop for example, are not true.

“There’s false information being circulated,” he said.

People will still be permitted to walk through the park-like area the church plans to create where the street now sits, Kreps said.

“Anywhere you can walk now, you will be able to walk (after it’s vacated),” Kreps said.

City Council discussed the ordinance at a committee meeting Monday evening.

The city’s Planning and Design Commission will review the proposal at a public meeting scheduled for Sept. 19 at 7 p.m. at City Hall.

Messiah Lutheran held a groundbreaking ceremony for the renovations to the West 215th Street building Aug. 26. The work on the building should be completed by the end of the year, Kreps said. Middle school students are scheduled to move into their new classrooms in the beginning of 2008, he added.

“By moving the classrooms,” Kreps told West Life, “we free up some much needed space in the existing building.”

Kreps co-chaired the Gemini Project Committee that promoted the February 2005 ballot issues in which voters paid for the newly opened Gilles-Sweet Elementary School and a new recreation center.

Kreps said that when Rev. Burce approached him to lead the church’s building campaign, he frankly didn’t have the appetite for it.

“But when Jesus asks you to do something, you don’t say no,” he said.