Drug store owners hope to avoid future accidents

Jones Drug Store in Jackson doesn’t have a drive through lane and store owners want to make sure it won’t “accidentally” have one in the future.

On three occasions in the past 50 years, drivers have lost control of their vehicles and crashed into the store on Court Street next door to Jackson City Hall and across the street from the old Cape Girardeau County Courthouse. The most recent incident happened Jan. 20 when an elderly woman drove her SUV through the store’s front door, narrowly missing a customer before crashing into the pharmacy counter.

During their study session Monday night, members of the Jackson Board of Aldermen discussed a request from the pharmacy that the city either install a barrier along the sidewalk in front of the drug store or allow them to install a barrier that would help prevent vehicles from hitting the building in the future.

Pharmacy owners Brian Thompson and Bryan Kiefer sent a letter to the board last week asking the aldermen to consider “providing some sort of barrier posts or even concrete flowerpots that can be secured into the sidewalk in front of our store and perhaps down Court Street itself to protect other businesses as well.”

Before last month’s accident, there were at least two other occasions when vehicles have jumped the curb along Court Street and have hit the drug store. Those accidents occurred in the 1970s and in 1998. There was also an incident last summer when a vehicle hit Jackson City Hall, breaking a window on the building’s first floor.

“We’ve been extremely lucky so far in each of those accidents with no injuries to our customers or the drivers of the vehicles,” Thompson and Kiefer said in their letter to the aldermen. “But that could change with the next potential ‘drive thru.’ With our customers aging and living longer, we feel like this has the potential to repeat itself until something is done.”

Thompson told the Southeast Missourian the drug store “won’t do anything without their (the aldermen’s) approval” and will “work with the city and historical society in making barriers as eye-friendly as can be.”

In his comments to the aldermen Monday night, Thompson said unless barriers are installed or other measures are taken “it’s only a matter of time” before other vehicles hop the curb and run into the building.

Jackson Mayor Dwain Hahs and several aldermen indicated support for the drug store’s request.

“We want to work with them to do something to improve the situation,” Hahs said.

“I’m all in favor of doing something to keep people from driving into your business,” Alderman Paul Sander told Thompson.

City administrator Jim Roach said city staff will ask a traffic engineer to suggest solutions that could range from physical barriers to changing the angled parking on the west side of Court Street to parallel parking spaces. Roach will report back to the aldermen at a future meeting.

Other items discussed by the aldermen during their study session Monday night included:

• An update on the city’s water system facility plan implementation by a representative of the engineering firm of Horner & Shifrin Inc.
• The proposed renewal of the city’s natural gas franchise agreement with Liberty Utilities.
• The possible addition of street lighting in the Indian Hills and Forest Acres subdivisions.
• Street improvement options for Harmony Lane and more than a dozen other streets, portions of which are outside Jackson’s city limits.
• An update on the sanitary sewer extension project in the Jackson North Industrial Park subdivision.

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