Cape rejects new name for school street

Silver Springs Road will get orange paw prints, but it won't be renamed Tiger Pride Drive in honor of Central High School's mascot as student leaders wanted.

The Cape Girardeau City Council Monday night voted down the request from the school's student senate, citing opposition from the police department and three owners of property near the school. The vote was 6-0. Councilman Hugh White was absent due to illness.

Police officials objected to changing the name of the road because of concerns that it could lead to dispatching confusion and set a bad precedent.

The council, however, voted unanimously to allow paw prints to be painted on the pavement and signs to be erected on Silver Springs Road promoting "tiger pride."

The council said the school also could ask the U.S. Postal Service for a Tiger Pride Drive mailing address even though there is no street by that name. Southeast Missouri State University has a "University Plaza" mail stop even though it is on Normal Avenue.

Council members praised the students' lobbying effort and the community pride instilled by the high school.

"There is no denying your impact on the community," Mayor Jay Knudtson said.

Edgar Palacios, secretary of the senior class, and Katie Porter, student senate president, urged the council to approve the street name change.

"Our Tiger pride won't allow us to give up without a fight," Palacios told the council before the vote on the proposed ordinance.

Property owners MidAmerica Hotels Corp., Drury Southwest Inc. and Benton Hill Investment Co. voiced opposition to renaming the street in a letter to city officials. Executives of those three companies suggested in their letter that paw prints could be painted on the street to designate the path to the high school campus.

Following the vote, the two student leaders said they plan to consult with city staff, as recommended by the council, before painting paw prints on Silver Springs Road.

"We are somewhat disappointed" in the council vote, Palacios said, but promotional signs and paw prints "will have the same effect."

Final design plans

In other business, the council approved final design plans for the $36 million River Campus arts school project. The city will be spending about $9 million to help fund the Southeast Missouri State University project to turn a former Catholic seminary overlooking the Mississippi River into a visual and performing arts campus.

University officials said the project has been scaled back to keep costs in line with the original proposal. The university will scrap plans for some art studios, electing to keep the ceramic and sculpture classes on the main campus. Storage space has been cut from plans for the new university museum. The museum will have storage space on the main campus, school officials said.

The new design includes a 950-seat theater, about 50 seats smaller than originally planned, said Al Stoverink, Southeast's facilities management director. Plans also include a 20-seat theater and a 211-seat recital hall in the old seminary chapel.

In another partnership with the university, the council gave initial approval to an ordinance to allow Southeast to pay the cost of engineering work for the widening of Broadway between Perry Avenue and Houck Place.

Under the agreement, the city will reimburse Southeast for the cost of the engineering work by June 30, 2006, at the latest. Kohler Engineering will do the design work at a cost of $109,720.

Stoverink said the agreement would allow the design work to be done sooner. The university wants to speed up the work because it plans to improve parking near Houck Field House and wants to dress up the entrance to the campus at Broadway and Henderson.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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