Roundabout to be landscaped

With weeds around its rim, the roundabout at Fifth Street and Edmonds Drive has weathered complaints lately about its lack of landscaping.

However, sometime this summer that problem will be remedied with rock landscaping in the center of the roundabout and trees and shrubs around the edges.

Carson City Senior Engineer Rob Fellows said as part of a project to construct a portion of the city's Linear Path, landscaping will be added to the roundabout at the same time about a half mile of trail is constructed from Butti Way to connect to an existing path just north of the roundabout on Edmonds.

"(The project) provides another piece of the linear park bike path to get across town, and it improves the image of Carson City in that area," Fellows said.

Fellows said the path and landscaping project, estimated around $160,000, will be completed this summer. The roundabout rocks will be similar those placed in the center of the new roundabouts off Arrowhead Drive. Adding vegetation to the center would require an extension of irrigation through the roundabout. The controversial traffic control device was completed in August 2000.

The path, which sits just north of the old prison wall, will not be paved but will have a treatment to make the ground hard, Fellows said. It will be paved later by the city's Parks Department. The Linear Park trail starts at Governor's Field off Roop Street and ends near the freeway right of way east of Saliman Lane. It will eventually run north to Fifth Street and then under the freeway. A section between Edmonds Drive and the Mexican Ditch Trail and Hells Bells Road was built last year.

Also, the sandstone prison wall will be repaired with labor provided by a workcrew from neighboring Nevada State Prison.

Fellows said the project also includes the addition of curb and gutter along part of Edmonds Drive.