You Are Here: Home - - Moraine Material Improving Entrance to the City

Carlisle has longed for a time where the entrance of our small city had the appearance of respectability for people coming in and out of our community. It has always been a nuisance to get your car washed in town and drive less than a block out of town and hit the dust and gravel of the Moraine Materials entrance.

For years Moraine has tried many different ways to improve their entrance. They have set up sprinklers to minimize the dust, we have seen employees of Moraine sweeping the entrance regularly. To no avail though, the dust and gravel has been that of an eyesore to the Community until now. In the January 15 minutes of the City of Carlisle website, Moraine presented their plan to improve the entrance.

In recent weeks, we have seen the start of the new entrance and now we can see the specifics of what Moraine plans to accomplish. It is great to have a company in our community like Moraine Materials and it is a privilege that they are a business in our city. It is also even better that they try so hard to work with the city and improve the entrance of their facility in so many ways. For those of you interested Carlisle Daily has copied the minutes from the January city meeting below identifying exactly what is being done to the entrance of Moraine Materials.

What do you think of the new entrance?

Leave your feedback by clicking here!

January 15, 2009 Planning Commission City Meeting Minutes Moraine Materials has started mining the gravel pit heavily again and this has caused some problems on our highway. They have been working with us and are trying to make some changes. What Moraine would like to do to fix the problem is to move the driveway further west from the existing driveway and make a larger entrance that you see on the drawing. Both the entrance and the entire road will be paved. The road would be asphalt.

In the road they will put in what is called a “wheel wash”. So as the gravel trucks are going out they will drive through, “the best way to describe this is like a pit”, where there is water and spray and this will wash the gravel off the wheels so when they get back up on to the pavement it should be gravel free. By the time they get out on the highway there should be no gravel at, except possibly gravel from the trucks. This is a very extensive project.

Along with moving it further west they will be filling in where the lake is nearest to the highway and behind the house on Crescent. So moving the road closer to the lake, the drive that Mr. Rogers questioned is going to be closer to the first house, “west on Central Avenue” this is owned by Moraine Materials so that is not an issue for them. Along with that, they want to do some landscaping. As you see on the drawing there is a landscape mound. We may have to relocate that mound because we may have some flood plain issues that we will have to deal with. They defiantly want to clean this up. They will re-enforce with cement and then will put asphalt on top of that so it is not going to break down at all from the heavy traffic. This is a site plan change and that is why we’re bringing it to you. They do want to leave the existing apron there. So if they want to sell that piece of land off at a later date they would have an entrance. However they are going to abandon the driveway. So we would only have an apron along the highway and if they want to subdivide this lot at a later date, they would have an entrance.

Mr. Winkler asked if that was the purpose of the landscape mound.
Mr. Wallace state that is the purpose of the landscape mound to show a division there, and if they develop this would be a plus for us. Mr. Hurt asked if the state would be involved. Mr. Wallace stated no, this is our highway to maintain. Once we became a city we became responsible for the state highway. This plan has been submitted to our City Engineer. She has approved it. Everything is fine with them, we really don’t have the specs on driveway aprons especially commercial driveway. The apron they are proposing is the same apron we put in at Vork Trucking. It will be that wide and of that design.

Questioned asked was how thick?
Mr. Wallace stated it is 9” thick with a 6” thick curb and from that apron will be concrete or asphalt all the way back.

Mr. Winkler stated he though there should be rumple strips somewhere, not sure if on the front part or in the back of the wheel wash.
Mr. Wallace stated yes.

Mr. Rogers questioned: what about the site plan coming off the hill as far as trucks pulling out?
Mr. Wallace stated there was no issues as far as what the engineers saw. No concerns with that what so ever. Mr. Wallace stated the apron is significant wider as you can tell by the drawing. If you look where the old driveway is you will see a rectangular there, that is the catch basin which has been destroyed, we keep replacing it and they keep driving over it. When we put the highway in and put this apron in the gravel pit was not being mined. Basically Martz’s had abandoned the gravel pit and the only traffic going in and out were cement trucks and at that point there wasn’t a problem maneuvering the apron. Since it is being mined, we have much larger trucks and a lot more traffic, that apron is not sufficient. So they asked if they could move it west and as far as staff is concerned we really don’t see any problems with it. Again they are spending a lot of money in paving and putting in the wheel wash which again is what we want anyway.

In doing that, we will be doing some clean up and landscaping. Hope you have noticed some landscaping on the north side of the road; they have put in some trees. Greg announced that Moraine Material owns both sides of the road. They have put trees up on the back side and they are going to do more landscaping in the spring. Mr. Hood stated there must be a lot of gravel back there; they plan on being here for awhile. Mr. Wallace stated he understood when they purchased it they had 10 years of life left. They have owned the property for about 1 year, there expanding back toward Lower Carlisle. In the late fall they placed what Greg calls a “dike”, you can see it off Lower Carlisle Road. .

Tags: