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Stephens skywalks made ‘Suzie Corner’ more safe

Stephens skywalks made ‘Suzie Corner’ more safe

People walk across the skywalk directly over Broadway at the Broadway and College Avenue intersection downtown.

In the 1960s, a prime location for young men from the University of Missouri, who enjoyed girl-watching, was the intersection of College Avenue and Broadway, which offered a view of hundreds of Stephens College women crossing the street between classes.  They called it “Suzie Corner.”

We at the city just called it dangerous.  Pedestrians and cars don’t mesh well at a major intersection with a high traffic count, so the city and the college asked the state for permission to build two pedestrian overpasses.  It was not an easy sell.

Today, almost all bridges come with pedestrian overpasses.  For example, the city now has overpasses where Paris Road crosses the Business Loop 70, where Providence Road crosses Interstate 70, where College Avenue and Rollins Road intersect, and at the new interchange at Gans Road and U.S. Highway 63.  But at that time, the only major pedestrian overpass had been built over Providence Road in the Douglass Park area as an urban renewal project in the early 1960s, and very few people used it.  Whenever the subject of overpasses came up, this fact was a problem.

In 1968, the intersection looked very different than it does today.  Tandy and Price streets to the north of Broadway had been joined with College and were being widened by the Missouri Highway Department, now the Missouri Department of Transportation (MODOT), to provide the thoroughfare seen today.  Service stations were located at the northwest and southeast corners of the intersection, where Stamper Commons and the administration building stand today.

When the city dismantled the service station on the northwest corner, it took more time than usual.  All work had to stop for safety’s sake when the students came across, and I suspected the workers were spending too much time gawking at the girls, as well.

Stephens College wanted both of the overpasses, but the Missouri Highway Department did not want to approve the one that crossed College Avenue, a state highway over which it had jurisdiction. If we were to get them to allow the overpass at Stephens College, we had to make the case that people would use it.

Stephens College Business Manager Harry Burge set up a meeting with the highway department, and we drove to Jefferson City together with Vice President Gordon Freese. We pointed out to Marvin J. Snider, chief engineer at the highway department, that there were more than 2,000 students at Stephens College who would be essentially forced to cross two of the busiest streets in Columbia.

Stephen’s bridge

Widening a highway through the middle of a college campus is never a good idea from a planning standpoint. I used the problem as a way to bring up potential construction of a new U.S. Highway 63 around Columbia.  I sketched out a potential route around town, and it eventually got pushed farther north and east because of development. One major advantage of the new highway would be to draw through traffic out of the Stephens College area.

It took years to get Highway 63 constructed because experts thought the destination of most traffic on the highway was Columbia. Highway 63 used to come south on Range Line Street, head east on Business Loop 70 and connect to what is now Old 63.  However, a new highway with good interchange connections to our city would get rid of the traffic bottleneck created by the jog.)

After discussing the College Avenue overpass, chief Snider asked us what the city planned to do about East Broadway, which was under the city’s jurisdiction.  Here was our pitch: the city would consider paying for the portion of the overpass that was above the street if the highway department would pay for the overpass over College and if Stephens would pay for the abutments for the overpasses and for their maintenance.  Stephens would also allow enough room between the abutments for the widening of East Broadway.

When we walked out of the meeting with Snider, the Stephens men expressed doubt about the highway department ever approving the plan.  Stephens had proposed the overpasses before but had been unable to receive highway department approval.  Noting that Snider had said he had to talk to the department’s chief lawyer, I said, “I think if you get your plan together for the building at the southeast corner, including a cafeteria and a mailroom, connecting the two overpasses, they might approve it.”

The new student commons building was dedicated in 1972 and renamed Stamper Commons in 1977.  Because this plan created a high-use destination, it encouraged students to use the overpasses. It was also important that Stephens, the highway department and the city would be working together to get both overpasses constructed.

Stephens’ architect designed the building to accommodate the overpasses, and the college promised to encourage students to use them.

The highway department and the City Council then approved the plans; the overpasses got built. They have been heavily used to this day, providing much greater safety for pedestrians on the Stephens campus.

One of Snider’s objections had been that, if the state built the Stephens overpass over College Avenue, the state might have to build an overpass that the University of Missouri wanted at College Avenue and Rollins Road.  Today, after the university developed more facilities on both sides of College Avenue, as part of an excellent pedestrian plan, that overpass just south of Rollins was eventually built, providing connectivity over the busy thoroughfare.

While it may take time to get them built, these pedestrian overpasses are an important part of our total transportation infrastructure that will continue to provide connectivity and safety for years to come.

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