By GENE KEMMETER
of The Gazette
Hoover Avenue in Plover is officially open.
The village held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday, Nov. 6, for the 2.5-mile section of the road between County Trunk HH and Cedar Drive.
"This is the biggest road project the village has ever had in its history," Village President Ken Shibilski said. The project cost $2.2 million, he said, which is $300,000 less than the original estimate.
The road was developed with a lot of public input. There were 24 public meetings on the road, and residents provided a major impact by deciding to keep the road as a two-lane, divided thoroughfare to reflect the residential development along the road. "Now, everyone is asking why we didn't make it four lanes right away," he said.
The route reflects citizen input to make it safe, he said, with left-turn lanes and sidewalks installed on streets east of Hoover to provide a safe crossing to the Green Circle, which is on the west side of Hoover.
Sidewalk was also installed in the vicinity of Plover-Whiting School to provide safe passage for children. "The school district worked with us on the purchase of property and design for safety and buses turning," Shibilski said.
The path area at the Little Plover River was also rerouted through Little Plover River Park, and the right-of-way along the trail was protected. Street lights were also installed to accommodate residents along Hoover.
The entire right-of-way was seeded with a prairie seed mix developed through the efforts of Earth Tech, the project's engineers, and the College of Natural Resources at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Shibilski said 18 species of wildflowers will ultimately bloom throughout the year along the route.
In addition, bridge replacements and impacts to the Little Plover River were done in a manner to maximize protection of fish habitat, and wetland mitigation was completed utilizing the existing floodway along the river.
Hoover has the second largest volume of traffic among north-south roads in Plover, behind Post Road.
The road itself has been known as Hoover only since the 1960s. At that time the route was in the town of Plover and was just another unnamed town road.
To assist emergency services such as police, fire and ambulance, county officials asked towns to name their roads. The Plover Town Board decided to name their north-south roads after presidents, starting with Kennedy on the eastern edge of the town and moving in descending order to the west, occasionally skipping some names, such as Truman.
At that time, the village of Plover was an unincorporated area within the town and one of its streets was named Roosevelt, so the name wasn't duplicated.
Thus, Hoover was assigned as the name of the road. That led some longtime residents along the road who were staunch Democrats to complain that they were stuck again with Hoover, even though they got rid of him in the 1930s during the Depression.