(Jan. 9) - New Madrid Street in Historic Downtown Sikeston will remain open for the foreseeable future.

During Monday’s Sikeston City Council meeting, council members heard discussion about closing New Madrid Street at Malone Avenue for the Legion Park Project.

Jay Lancaster, Sikeston Director of Public Works, informed Council that the city applied for two grants. One was the Legion Park Project and the second was the addition of a playground to Legion Park. While the Legion Park Project was approved, the grant for the playground was denied.

The possible closing of New Madrid Street was originally brought up to provide safety for children playing on the playground.

Sikeston Mayor Greg Turnbow said the playground was the only thing in play to close the street.

“When we first talked about this, I didn’t like the risk of that playground being right next to a street with traffic on it,” Turnbow said.

Since that time, a traffic study was done, and Turnbow said the amount of traffic that would be pushed to Kingshighway would be too much.

“My personal opinion is that you don’t put a playground there,” Turnbow said. “You don’t put a playground there because of the traffic counts and we don’t need a playground that separates two accesses where a kid can get into trouble.”

He added that to get the grant for the playground, it would put Legion Park into a lifetime assessment where they could do nothing else with the land and the city didn’t want to do that.

Turnbow did say the city has offered to the Collom Family, who want to put the playground in, that they can put that playground anywhere else in Sikeston.

Others were against closing the street as well including downtown businesses and the Sikeston Depot.

Dr. Larry Bohannon, vice president of the Sikeston Depot, said the closing of New Madrid Street would really close in the Depot. He said that is one of two egresses for the Depot and it would be difficult for people to get in and out of the parking lot.

Lancaster said the grant allows some flexibility and Council unanimously agreed to leave New Madrid Street open while also having an alternate set of plans drawn up with “traffic calming” measures to slow down drivers.