Will the latest Yorktown roundabout be another dud?
Local officials defend award-winning roundabout at Nebo-Jackson
YORKTOWN — The new roundabout at Nebo and River roads is open to traffic, but we’re still awaiting the outcome of the central island.
Here’s hoping that it turns out better than the one a mile north, at Nebo and Jackson Street.
In addition to managing traffic, roundabouts can serve as a work of art, a gateway feature, a decorative landmark, a sense of place and so forth.
As Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard has said: “Roundabouts are not only functional for moving traffic and keeping motorists safe, they are also opportunities to enhance the beauty of our daily drives, lift the spirits of our residents and hopefully inspire all of us to pay attention to elements of design and architecture no matter what we create.”
It could be argued that the roundabout at Nebo-Jackson is not uplifting, inspirational or attractive — that it looks like a junction where a truckload of riprap or ballast was dumped.
Regarding the flagpoles: Was there a buy-three-get-one-free sale at Tractor Supply Co? Can anyone make out the symbols on all four flags without getting rear-ended? On a windless day you can’t see any of the symbols.
And do motorists really need the cheap-looking, plasticky directional signs to find their way to Yorktown, Muncie and Delaware County?
The brick pattern was a nice touch, but don’t all roundabouts have that?
During a telephone interview with Pete Olson, the town manager at Yorktown, I learned that he helped design the Nebo-Jackson roundabout with other local officials and licensed professionals.
As it turns out, the flags and signage reflect the intersection of Muncie, Yorktown and Delaware County — our version of the Four Corners monument where the boundaries of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona meet.
“It also shows what good government looks like when everybody gets along,” Olson said. “It was an effort to show that all three of us worked together.”
Completed in 2016-17, the roundabout was a federal-aid project, 20% of the cost of which was shared equally by the the city of Muncie, the town of Yorktown and Delaware County. That further explains the three signs and the flags of those three governmental entities, as well as the American flag.
(In the past, Muncie and Yorktown have engaged in at least one ugly border/annexation war that went to court. Another example of hostility between the town and the city was when Yorktown built a landscaped gateway at Interstate 69 and Ind. 332 in part to beat Muncie to the punch).
As for the rocks, the idea was low/no maintenance. You don’t have to mow, prune or weed rocks.
And the signs are not made of cheap plastic, Olson said: “It’s an acrylic product, and it wasn’t cheap.”
The town manager dealt with criticism of the roundabout calmly, saying, “I’m a firm believer that art should make you feel something. If you don’t like it, that’s a feeling.” And besides, “You’re the first person who told me they didn’t like it.”
What’s more, “the project won a state award for engineering; it won a number of awards,” Olson went on.
For details, he referred me to Angie Moyer, director of the engineering department for Delaware County, who said: “I’ve never heard a negative thing about that project. But not everybody has to like the same thing. We were looking for low maintenance.”
The roundabout won a merit award from the American Council of Engineering Companies of Indiana in 2018 and an outstanding achievement in concrete award from the Indiana Chapter of the American Concrete Institute in 2017.
Olson has no images of what the new roundabout at Nebo and River roads will look like. But based on his narration and what’s been built so far, I’d say they’re continuing the “rocky” theme. You could call the new junction “Rocky II.”
The island will hold some of the same old riprap. But as a bonus it adds mounds of interesting boulders for curb appeal. The project also will incorporate some green space, and no flags will be flown at the site. But expect more signage, which Olson describes as “lit-up graphic art work … symbolizing things in Yorktown — neighborhoods, park, schools, et cetera.”
I was unable to find an expert at the American Society of Landscape Architects willing to comment on the Nebo-Jackson roundabout, but one member referred me to the “biophilic design movement,” or designing with nature in mind.
Perhaps an example of “biophilic design” is the Jackson Street-Morrison Road roundabout a mile east of the Jackson-Nebo roundabout. Ornamental grasses/trees, daylilies, rose bushes and groundcover blanket the island at Jackson-Morrison.
Another case in point could be the grassy McKinley Avenue traffic circle at Ball State University. I was told four years ago that the circle eventually would include a sculpture or maybe an obelisk. But instead it contains a lone, swamp white oak tree, which in time will get to about 75 feet tall and 50 feet wide — so a magnificent tree at some point. It can take wet soils, and the traffic circle drains to that tree.
As additional publicly funded roundabouts are built here down the road, officials might want to consider a more democratic and inclusive process, such as public presentations/comment before construction.
My own favorite local roundabout is on Walnut Street in downtown Muncie, featuring “The Passing of the Buffalo" statue created by Cyrus D. Dallin in 1929.
An inscription reads:
“It portrays an American Indian chief in full regalia with bow in hand — his foot resting on the skull of a buffalo contemplating not only the last of the buffalo as it existed as a major source of game on the North American Continent but also the passing of the nomadic way of life the Indians had been accustomed to.
“ ‘The Passing of the Buffalo’ was initially installed in 1931 on the estate of Mrs. Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge in Madison, New Jersey. The Boulder upon which the statue stands was selected by Mr. Dallin and became a part of the over-all statue setting at that time. The statue was acquired from the Dodge estate and moved to Muncie in 1975 and was dedicated and presented to the city on April 25, 1978.”
Now, that’s a boulder!