Former council member Thomas predicts 'mess' if Second Avenue closed for clinic

Former city Streets Commissioner Don Thomas has one word for it - “snagglefest.”

That's what Thomas is predicting will happen next spring if the City Council votes to close the arterial, Second Avenue SE, from 10th to 12th streets SE to make way for a new medical facility.

The council will vote on the street closure for the third and final time tonight, and Mayor Ron Corbett says he still has the votes to close the street. Twice before, the council has voted 6-3 in favor of the street closing.

Former Commissioner Thomas faults the current council for its failure to seek options. Instead, the council has given in to the all-or-nothing option presented by Physicians' Clinic of Iowa, he says.

“Back when I was on the City Council, we took time to look at alternatives,” says Thomas, who served as streets commission and City Council member from 1994 through 2005. “When you don't look at alternatives, you could end up with something that's really going to be mess.”

He says the traffic headaches that he assures will come with closing the street for Physicians' Clinic of Iowa will hurt the clinic as much as anyone because the clinic will be in the center of the coming traffic congestion, Thomas says.

“It's going to hit them (PCI) first. They're going to be sunk in the middle of it,” says Thomas.

PCI and St. Luke's Hospital, which will own the street and other land on which the PCI clinic will sit, have both asked the current City Council to close a portion of Second Avenue SE for what PCI calls a “regional medical mall.”

Thomas remembers back several years when St. Luke's Hospital asked him to close A Avenue NE between 10th and 12th streets NE for the hospital's use. The city refused. St. Luke's Hospital also sought the closing a few years before Thomas took office.

Thomas says A Avenue NE and Second Avenue SE take pressure off First Avenue East, which is in between A and Second avenues and which is the busiest of the three streets.