By Ben Johnson
Construction began on the long-anticipated Hamburg area high school earlier this summer, but halted briefly on August 12 when the city issued a stop-work order after discovering Traffic Engineering had not yet approved a traffic plan for the new high school. Prep work at the site, which sits on 65 acres at 2000 Winchester Road, was briefly limited while city planners and officials from Fayette County Public Schools met and came to an agreement for traffic improvements after working through the potential issues. A building permit was granted Thursday to move forward with the project.
The new high school’s main entrance will be on Winchester Road, but there will be another entrance on Meeting Street, a new access road that connects to Sir Barton Way, already one of Hamburg’s busiest roads. This would redirect some of the new school’s additional traffic flow. During the Wednesday meeting, the two sides agreed to increase the capacity of the turn lane from Sir Barton Way to Meeting Street. City and school officials said discussions on how to improve traffic flow around the high school will be ongoing. The new high school is set to open in the fall of 2017 and enrollment of about 1,800 students is expected.
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