The March 2 closure date may be pushed back a bit, said Rich Engle, Hamilton’s director of engineering.
The section of Rhea Avenue is being shut down because contractors working on the development want to use the parking lot formerly used by Champion that’s adjacent to Rhea as a staging area and a location for construction subcontractors’ project trailers, Engle said.
“Then they would have free access back and forth across Rhea without having to worry about traffic,” he said.
The official detour for people driving eastbound on Rhea will be to take northbound Hunter Avenue and then eastbound Gordon Avenue to B Street. While that is the official route, Engle believes people will use other ways to get to the Black Street Bridge or Main Street.
Eventually, officials also will close the same span of Warwick Avenue — between Hunter and North B — which is a block north of Rhea.
But that won’t happen until construction workers start creating a new parking lot in the area. One reason those sections of streets will permanently be closed is so families with young athletes and their siblings aren’t crossing streets on their way between the new parking lot and the sports complex, which is to open in late 2021.
“We’re not going to close Warwick until the developer’s site contractor starts working on the parking lot,” Engle said.
In January of 2019, officials said they planned to create a new roadway parallel to Rhea and Warwick, located slightly north of where Warwick is now, to replace the two roadways. At the time, that street was to be named Champion Boulevard, but that name no longer is the case.
Instead, “it’ll just be an extension of Rhea Avenue,” Engle said.
There has been an informal campaign, started by 102-year-old Hamilton resident Margaret L. Lewis, of renaming North B Street to Champion Boulevard, Avenue or Road.
Since the Journal-News published an article about the idea, others have said they liked the idea, and some added ideas of their own.
Liberty Township resident Mary Kristi wrote on Facebook: “I have a GREAT idea, I think, Champion Way!”
The closure may be pushed back, depending on pending decisions by the developer and city administration.
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