Over the past 3 years, a construction project at the corner of NE Monroe and NE Martin Luther King, Junior Boulevard (MLK) has blocked the sidewalk on the west side of MLK. This has created a situation where people can either walk 1200 feet out of direction by going to Rodney and back, cross MLK twice or just walk in the road.

I live one block away from this project and I watched it burn down a while ago. The fences stayed up the entire time. People, myself included, walk every day on the edge of the car lane on MLK because it is the fastest way to get from A to B on certain trips. If this project were downtown with their smaller block sizes and easier to cross streets, accommodations would still be made to provide scaffolding so that people could walk next to a construction project. It is an embarrassment that a developer for a small pittance can block a sidewalk on a major traffic street for multiple years.

I even watched a small child riding a bike ride without a second thought from the sidewalk into oncoming traffic to get around this fence. When will the city wake up to the realization that they have been making life too easy for developers on major streets?