Sussex Drive safety concerns raised in Lewes

Cape Henlopen School District officials have restricted parking on Sussex Drive, which runs along the athletic fields behind the Lewes School.

The move comes after several residents of Highland Acres aired safety concerns, saying traveling the road is a free-for-all or gauntlet. 

“Anyone who goes back there knows at some point in the day you run the gauntlet of open car doors and double-parked vehicles, children darting from behind vehicles, and parents standing in the street having conversations having no idea where their kids are,” said Highland Acres resident Sally Boswell.

Boswell and her neighbors attended a Sept. 4 Lewes Mayor and City Council public hearing on the proposed site plan for the new Richard A. Shields Elementary School. They encouraged city officials to fix the problem as soon as possible. School district officials took immediate action, informing organizations that use their facilities regularly to stop parking along Sussex Drive.

The school district is planning to relocate Shields Elementary from its existing location across Sussex Drive into the Lewes School, currently home to Sussex Consortium. When the consortium moves to its new home on Sweetbriar Road this winter, school officials plan to remodel and renovate the century-old Lewes School into a new elementary school. The existing Shields building will eventually be demolished and replaced by the school district’s third middle school.

Brian Bassett, the district director of capital projects, said traffic on Sussex Drive should significantly decrease in the coming months and years. The new Shields Elementary will have about half as much bus traffic as the existing Sussex Consortium. There will also be many fewer teachers and aides, he said.

The Shields plan also directs teachers, parents and visitors to a 132-space parking lot on the east side of the property through an entrance off Savannah Road.

The new middle school will be smaller than Shields, he said, designed for a maximum of 600 students. Bassett also expects a much larger parking lot at the new middle school.

Sussex Drive residents urged city council to take action now instead of waiting until the projects are all complete in four to five years.

“You need to do something sooner rather than later,” Sussex Drive resident Bob Carter told council. “Just getting here tonight, it was one way in and one way out. If there was an emergency, it would’ve been a problem.”

Residents say Sussex Drive is a mish-mash. The first few hundred feet are wide with a curb, sidewalk and defined parking areas. After parking lots for the schools on both sides of the street, Sussex Drive then becomes difficult to navigate for motorists and pedestrians.

On the Lewes School side, an old, cracked sidewalk leads to athletic fields, while no sidewalk exists for several hundred feet from Shields to the entrance to Highland Acres. Along the athletic fields, the grass has turned to gravel and dirt where people have created their own overflow parking for events, such as Pop Warner football, the Historic Lewes Farmers Market and other events.

While the school district has already taken action, city officials are also planning to address the problem at the next traffic safety review ad hoc committee meeting. Mayor Ted Becker said many of the concerns could also be addressed through projects funded with state and federal funds.

Shields site plan approved

The site plan for the new Richard A. Shields Elementary School was unanimously approved by Lewes Mayor and City Council Sept. 9.

Plans call for an addition to the existing Lewes School, blending the historic 1921 brick school into the new design. The existing Shields is expected to be demolished by early 2022.

Major upgrades at the historic Lewes School include air conditioning and new windows, but critical features of the building will be retained, including the auditorium and gymnasium.

The wings on either side of the existing building will be demolished to make way for new two-story classroom wings to be built off the back and around the existing gymnasium. 

A cafeteria will be constructed in the new section along Sussex Drive. 

Bassett said the goal is to begin demolition of portions of the Lewes School in the fall; construction of the new school should commence in spring 2020. The targeted opening is fall 2021, but the district may move students later in the year if construction is delayed. 

The existing Shields Elementary was built in 1966, with renovations and additions in 1987, 1994 and 2007. It will be demolished to make way for the school district’s third middle school, which was approved by referendum in 2018.

Among the public’s concerns with the project is a plan to build a stormwater outfall into Blockhouse Pond. The pipe would only be utilized when a wet stormwater pond on the Shields site reaches capacity.

Zach Crouch, an engineer with Davis, Bowen and Friedel, said there are no existing stormwater facilities on the property, and most stormwater moves across the surface to Blockhouse Pond. Tests show the property is not a good candidate for infiltration, he said.

By having a stormwater system, he said, the water will be filtered before it is discharged into the pond.

Stormwater in front of the school, he said, will use the existing stormwater system on Savannah Road.

Charlie O’Donnell, the city’s engineer from George, Miles and Buhr, said there also appears to be stormwater runoff into Blockhouse Pond from Beebe Healthcare’s stone parking lot behind Rite Aid. However, he said, the majority of stormwater on Beebe’s campus is diverted into a collection system that is eventually discharged into the Lewes-Rehoboth Canal.

To ensure water quality in Blockhouse Pond is not affected, the city will periodically test the water. O’Donnell estimates a test would cost the city $500 or less annually.