By DEE NORTON
Sun Writer

Fifteen years ago city officials looked down a hill beside Kitsap way and said, “It sure would be nice to do something about that.”

Other since have wished the same “something’ could be done. All have scratched their heads and gone away saying, “No money.”

Fred Schoneman, present public works commissioner, tried convincing the state highway commission it was a state problem. They said “no,” it wasn’t.

Schoneman developed a number of “cheap” solutions. But none of them earned state approval for connecting 11st st. with the primary highway.

BUT THE LAST legislature gave a little under pressure and more money. The state gasoline tax was upped one cent a gallon and half of this refunded to the cities n a 75-25 matching per capita system for arterial improvements.

Schoneman and William Fortman, city engineer, grabbed the $186,00 offered over the first two-year period and said, “Let’s do something.”

The “something” is a new path for 11^th st. between N. Callow ave. and Kitsap way, eliminating the steep hill and two sharp turns.

Total coast is figured at $260,000. This included $55,000 for a bridge over Wycoff ave.; $118,000 for fill material, labor and equipment, and $37,00 for land acquisition.

SCHONEMAN SAID much of the 25 per cent which the city must pay to get the gasoline tax money is written off in city services used on the project.

“Next year at this time we’ll have it – and it will be paid for,” Schoneman and Fortman said, standing atop the same hill frequented by city officials so often since 1948.

More than a dozen buildings have been moved or demolished, their places taken for the moment by a 200-food-wide puddle of mud (frozen mud right now).

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Re-routing of a main sewer line under 11^th st. will be completed soon.

THEN WILL COME dirt. – 109,000 cubic yards of it. Fortman says that’s enough to cover six football fields with dirt 10 feet deep or make a pile nine times the size of Bremerton city hall.

It will be 50 feet deep in some placed and 240 feet wide at the base. It will come from nearly every unwanted dirt pile in the area, including the First st. cut between N. Hartford and Marion aves.

Terrell, Meade and N. Cambrian aves. Will be dead ended by the fill. N. Wycott will not. There a bridge will be erected.

The bridge will be 60-feet long and some 36 feet above the present 11^th and Wycoff intersection; about the same height as the lowest utility pole crossarm.

WHEN FINISHED, the new 11^th st. section will be 550 feet long and four traffic lanes wide, with only a slight bend near Wycoff AND NO SHARP TURNS.

A one per cent slope is designed for the Callow to Wycoff segment. From the Wycoff overpass to Kitsap way the grade will be about seven per cent. Traffic will enter Kitsap way only slightly downhill from the present junction.

Schoneman is negotiating for temporary use of some other property in the area as a route for westbound traffic during the 11^th st. closure. Eastbound traffic will have to use 6^th st., he reports, until the project is completed.

“This is the biggest project the city has ever tackled, Schoneman said. “We couldn’t have done much more than dream about it without that state money.”

THE PROJECT is only part of a much larger one envisioned by Schoneman, Fortman and joint city-county planner Ralph Lifvendahl – a one-way gird system.

Plans for this include a traffic loop around Bremerton, using Burwell st., Washington ave. and 11^th st., with 4^th and 5^th st. and Park ave. as “inside feeders.”

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