HOWARD, WI (WTAQ) – Brown County Public Works is holding a public informational meeting about proposed improvements at the intersection of Packerland Drive and Mason Street.
“We’ve had a lot of accidents over the years at Mason and Packerland. Those frontage roads are just too close to Mason Street,” said Brown County Public Works Director, Paul Fontecchio. “We are averaging one injury accident almost every six weeks there. We’ve had six or seven injuries just since July 1st of this year. Those frontage roads are just causing too much chaos…At some point you’ve got to bring forth ideas to say ‘Hey, we’ve got to do something different here. Too many people are getting hurt at these intersections.'”
Fontecchio calls it an ‘access control’ project with ideas like limiting frontage roads to right turn-in, right turn-out only, constructing a roundabout at Packerland Drive and Trojan Drive, and adding an access point off of Mason Street across from the entrance to Northeast Wisconsin Technical College.
“So this informational meeting will be kind of what our concepts are, when we think we can get this going, and how it’s going to impact businesses in the area,” Fontecchio said. “People avoid them naturally because they’re scary intersections. They’re not comfortable. If we can make it better from an access perspective, I’m hoping it’ll help those businesses actually.”
The project is in the conceptual stage and Public Works does not currently have formal plans. Conceptual diagrams will be presented at the meeting.
“We’re looking at multiple different ways to accommodate the access that we’re proposing to take away at those frontage roads,” Fontecchio told WTAQ News. “These are really conceptual. We haven’t even started a topographic survey, the design hasn’t really started…They just drew it on paper. It’s literally just lines on paper and conceptual drawings.”
The public informational meeting is set for Tuesday, October 26th at 2:00 p.m. in the Mallard Conference Room at the Duck Creek Center, 2198 Glendale Avenue in Howard.
While this meeting is open to the public, the focus will be on the businesses in the area that will be impacted by this project. It is jointly funded by Brown County and the City of Green Bay, with Brown County taking the lead for project development.
It is expected that design work will take place in early 2022 and construction in 2023.
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