NEW PALESTINE — The creation of the county’s newest roundabout at the intersection of county roads South 600W and 200S is complete. Not only did the roundabout straighten out the roads that were offset there, but it also became of the most decorative in the county.
The center of the roundabout is set up high on limestone with three decorative deer at the top surrounded by native and low-maintenance plants.
The new roundabout is very different from many of the others put in by the county and one installed just a few blocks away at county roads South 500W and 300S which is barren in the center expect at Christmas time when New Palestine officials add lights to make a Christmas Tree from the flag pole there.
County engineer Gary Pool said the creative design at the roundabout at Mt. Comfort Road (South 600W) was wanted from the get-go by county officials.
Pool said that when Hancock County Commissioners and Hancock County Council members asked him to start looking into parks, trails and other public-use items, a team of some of the county’s finest was assembled to make these areas look as nice as possible. One of the members of the Hancock County Parks board, Hollie Kinker, who heads up beautification for the county, was asked to help come up with some good ideas for the roundabouts, and Pool believes she did.
“She worked with a few different contractors as we wanted this to be action-focused,” Pool said of the design. “We don’t need another glossy plan unless it helps us directly do more stuff.”
Pool noted they decided to do some type of beautification about a year ago and Kinker had the new roundabout and a few other places generally designed in a couple of months. Kinker and Hancock County Highway Department’s Ryan Hartley got the centerpiece done.
“We had extra limestone to use and we bought the deer at the 200S 600W,” Pool said. “I felt, for many living here, it would be a good place for the deer marking Doe Creek Middle School, which used to be near it.”
The old Doe Creek Middle School is now New Palestine Junior High School. Hartley, who was asked to make the design come to life, said adding the deer seemed like the logical thing to do for the area and was pretty easy to do.
“I used to be a Doe Creek Buck myself,” Hartley said “We had to use the right kind of deer for the area. We had to put white tail deer in there — a buck, a doe and fawn, the whole family.”
Hartley noted at first the idea of making a more “fancy” kind of a roundabout took him off guard when Pool asked him to do it, but he said Pool was certain county officials wanted to make the roundabouts unique.
“So we get with Hollie, who had come up with the design, and talked with her about adding the deer, and that only cost us less than $2,000 to add them, so it was a no-brainer,” Hartley said.
Pool said they plan to look into getting all the county roundabouts looking better due to the positive work and outcome on this one.
“Hollie has great synergy with the other departments, and she linked us up with Ryan Hartley at the county highway department, who is quite the artist,” Pool said. “They did a great job and the feedback has been very positive.”
Hartley noted a big part of making this roundabout better was because they were able to use left over limestone from a bridge job that had been saved on 200W and 300N on the new roundabout.
“The limestone, it was too cool to throw away, so we had been keeping it,” Hartley “They’ve been stacked back here at the shop, so we decided to use them as part of this project.”
Pool noted the roundabout at 500W and 300S does now belong to New Palestine, but they are like the county and cash strapped so, in most roundabout design, they have to “MacGyver things a bit.”
“Hollie and Ryan are very good at working with other municipalities if they reach out,” Pool said. “Design and construction cost about $30k for South 600W and 200S. It helps that the design was in-house.”
Pool also noted he can’t brag enough about the commissioners, council and officials with the Indiana Department of Transportation and their grants and the inter-departmental cooperation for helping the county move forward with the roundabouts, which make driving safer.
“We get off-center on some projects, but we are always trying our best and being creative,” Pool said. “Counties aren’t funding for things like this. But we are making it happen. There are more coming.”
Pool noted that they make roundabouts as low-maintenance as possible, but he thinks the contractor did well on the work at the latest one in the county.
“It looks great,” Hartley said. “We are going to continue to work on the rest of them, too,,and our goal is low maintenance and that’s what we’ve got with this one with low-maintenance plants.”
