Repaving of Prairie Avenue in Pueblo creates driving issues for adjacent senior mobile home park

PUEBLO, Colo. (KRDO) -- An inch doesn't seem like much, but it's making a big difference for vehicles going in and out of the Oasis Mobile Country Club -- a mobile home community for senior citizens along Prairie Avenue on the city's south side.

To accommodate the city's repaving of the busy street last summer, workers rebuilt the concrete driveway for the park -- but it's now an inch higher than it should be, the city confirmed Monday.

"When (workers) set the driveway, they had to avoid an electrical conduit that runs underneath the sidewalk area," said Charles Roy, the city's deputy public works director who inspected the driveway. "The solution is to remove this portion of concrete, expose it, see if that conduit is actually there. If it is, the property owner (of the park) will have to relocate the conduit because it's in the city's right-of-way. Then, we'll lower the driveway back to city standards."

That's good news for drivers who said that they have scraped the underside of their vehicles on the higher driveway, and have even had some minor wheel and tire damage from hitting the lip of a storm drain if they turned too abruptly to avoid the bump.

"It's worse going in than going out," said neighbor Maria Herrera. "And sometimes you have to drive in quickly because of the traffic coming so fast behind you. You don't want to get rear-ended. And not only that. Let's say we get a senior citizen who walks in and takes their wheelchair. They're really going to bump in and fall off of this little thing. It is too high."

Cheryl Slevin, who visits her mother at the park, said that her daughter recently damaged a wheel on her car when hitting the storm drain.

"That's awesome!" she exclaimed when learning that driveway repairs are coming. "I didn't think it would happen that quick. You're awesome. The Road Warrior is awesome."

As of Wednesday morning, repair work still hadn't begun.

"The job should take about a week or so," Roy explained. "We'll do one-half of the driveway at a time."

He added that people who believe that their vehicles were damaged by the situation, can file a claim with the city.

It's also an example -- and a reminder -- of the importance of reporting such a situation to your local public works director as soon as possible.

"We came out as soon as we heard about it," Roy said. "Had we known about it last summer or fall, we could have fixed it sooner."

KRDO 13 also noticed that the level of Prairie in that area is slightly higher after the repaving -- meaning that drivers leaving the park can scrape their vehicles on the street if they drive too fast to avoid oncoming traffic.

Maybe the best solution is for everyone to just slow down.