Community input begins for Sunshine corridor plan

Foam boards on easels, markers and sticky notes – all the trappings of a community input session were in place at the start of the June 3 Sunshine Street Corridor Study open house hosted by the city of Springfield at the Jefferson Avenue Baptist Church.

The open house was held to gather public input on the Sunshine Street corridor, a 3.1-mile section of the road managed by the city that’s currently the focus of a $702,000 study conducted in partnership with Springfield-based engineering firm Crawford, Murphy & Tilly Inc.

The displays featured prompts, like “How often do you use Sunshine Street?” “What do you want on the corridor?” and “What don’t you want on the corridor?”

Regardless of the question, Monna Stafford, who lives three blocks north of Sunshine on Portland Street and Dollison Avenue, added a sticky note with the same all-caps reply: “STOP THE DRAG RACING.”

“When they start that – it starts about 10 and will go to about 2 – that noise comes right across the neighborhood and into my bedroom,” she said.

Stafford’s emphatic Post-it Notes were part of a pastel sea of them, with many of the participants – mostly residents offering visions of what they’d like to see.

“More green spaces.” “More lights to slow traffic.” “Boulevard … will stop cross-traffic issues and improve eye appeal.” “Use vacant businesses for apartments for Mercy Hospital employees.”

There were also concerns: “Could there be a walking bridge near Sunshine Elementary?” “Traffic is a joke.” “Make businesses keep their areas clean.”

Cora Scott, the city’s director of public information and community engagement, said the open house is the first of multiple touch points for the public to offer input on a plan and feedback on a draft that will ultimately be presented to City Council at the end of 2025 or beginning of 2026.

She noted the plan will take safety, development and quality of place into consideration.

“Sunshine Street being such an integral part of our roadway network, we’re having multiple departments involved,” she said. “What’s going to come out of this is a plan that addresses the safety of the road and so much more.”

The study is partly funded by the American Rescue Plan Act to the tune of $217,000 and the city’s quarter-cent sales tax for capital improvements at $485,000.

City officials say the study’s goal is to make the street safer, more attractive and better suited to the needs of its users, including drivers, walkers, bikers, businesses and residents. The project is being undertaken in coordination with the city’s Forward SGF comprehensive plan, which stresses streets’ value as shared public spaces.

The study covers the portion of the corridor that extends from Glenstone Avenue in the east to Kansas Expressway in the west.

The study is being guided by a technical advisory team, composed of engineers and transportation experts, and a community advisory team, made up of residents, business owners and service organizations, according to a news release from the city.

Brett Foster, Springfield’s assistant director of public works, called Sunshine one of Springfield’s busiest and most complicated streets in the release.

“It’s a key route connecting economic centers and commuters, and it also supports our neighborhoods and schools,” Foster said. “This study will help us understand how to make Sunshine function better and safer for years to come.”

Surprising findings
The adjectives that pop to mind for many people when considering Sunshine Street are words like “busy” or “congested.”

During the open house, Catherine Kazmierczak, a planner with Development Strategies, a consultant to the plan, stood by a panel that showed a surprising finding: a decline in visitation of sites along the route.

At the remark that the finding is counterintuitive, Kazmierczak replied, “It is also counterintuitive to us. We think a lot of what’s happening is actually competition with other areas.”

The city-controlled stretch of Sunshine is less conducive to development at the moment, she said. While a new Target store is going in near the western boundary of the route in the city, that’s not something planners would anticipate nearer to the city center.

“That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, but just the current development patterns and marketability of the corridor itself might not be conducive to bringing in something of that nature right now,” she said.

Kazmierczak’s display showed patterns traced by Placer.ai, software that tracks movements of people through their cell phones and links the data to the addresses where the travelers reside.

Data showed decreases in visitation at a number of locations in the period of 2018 to 2024. For example, Wonders of Wildlife visitation declined by 36%, from 880,000 visitors in 2018 to 560,000 last year.

Bass Pro Shop visitation declined by 18% in the same period, from 2.6 million to 2.2 million.

Shopping centers saw similar decreases, with Elfindale Center down 21% to 228,000 and the Plaza Shopping Center down 7% to 500,000, according to Placer.ai.

Ecommerce may be a factor, she said.

“People aren’t necessarily needing to go to Bass Pro to get their fishing pole or camping gear. They’re just buying it online and having it shipped to them,” she said.

Congestion may also divert people from locations along the route.

“That’s a lot of what we’re actually analyzing, especially when we look at Sunshine Street, is the access points and development types – your thing of, ‘I want to go get a donut, but getting in and out of this parking lot is really difficult,’ is all information that we’re going to be able to take and actually fold into this process,” she said.

Sunshine activity
The corridor – one of the city’s busiest – has been the site of development efforts that have raised debate among some residents and of safety proposals that have been opposed by some business owners.

One of the city’s most talked-about development efforts is a proposed commercial center at the northwest corner of Sunshine Street and National Avenue – a site that is still undeveloped as a case regarding its use is being appealed.

Another debated development was at the corner of Sunshine Street and Jefferson Avenue, where a 7Brew Coffee has since been developed and an adjoining lot is available.

In January 2023, Springfield City Council voted down an ordinance that would have put a 210-day pause on development along the route pending a study.

Sunshine Street poses thorny issues along its entire stretch, including the Missouri Department of Transportation-controlled portions on either side of the city’s corridor study area.

On the east side of Glenstone Avenue, in the MoDOT portion of the road, businesses extending to U.S. Highway 65 weighed in on safety improvements proposed by the Missouri Department of Transportation in 2023. Many objected to a plan to install medians where none now exist – barriers that would restrict access to some businesses. A plan that eliminates some of the originally proposed medians was released in December of that year by MoDOT, according to past SBJ reporting, though many of the proposed medians remain in the design.

Jennifer Williams, communications manager for MoDOT’s Southwest District, told SBJ that the median project has been placed on hold.

“We have heard the recent concerns about improvements to Sunshine Street in Springfield, and we are pausing moving forward with this project at this time,” she said via email on June 4.

She noted the city of Springfield, a partner on the project, has new leadership, with a new City Council member, mayor and city manager.

“MoDOT plans to meet and have discussions with the new leadership soon to gather their feedback on this project and to see if we can continue with their cooperation,” she said.