Fear of a flat tire kept me from making it all the way down the next great Avenue of Progress.
Beaver Street is poised to be the long-awaited viaduct into St. Joseph’s industrial South Side. A new bridge will spring off King Hill Avenue, span the railroad tracks and touch down just east of Stockyards Expressway at Beaver Street.
The little street won’t show up on most maps and requires a lot of zooming before it registers on Google Maps.
It’s hard to find at street level, as well, since it has no signs or markings of any sort. The road is just to the north of the former Seitz plant on Stockyards Expressway. Midwest Scrap Management now has a busy recycling operation at the site.
Beaver Street is paved, in a way, with a chip-and-seal covering, although it’s been awhile since it was either chipped or sealed. The potholes are deep enough a call to a tow truck might be in order if you fell in one.
Thank goodness there was no other traffic on Beaver Street because it’s just passable for one vehicle, although two cars would probably double its daily load.
Venturing into the second block of this two-block street, the weeds in the ditch grew taller ’til they towered over the roof of the car. Straight ahead, trains bearing loads of coal rumbled past. Rusted sheets of corrugated tin separating the road from the tracks shook from the vibration of the rail cars.
So much debris and trash littered the last portion of the street, I maneuvered a U-turn before I picked up something in my tire.
But I’d seen Beaver Street. I’d seen the future. The St. Joseph Regional Port Authority bought 16 acres along the street to build a truck staging area — a massive parking lot — to handle semi trucks coming over the new bridge.
Give them credit for vision. But the Port Authority has been long on hope for a long time in this portion of the city all but forgotten by most others.
They were a driving force behind highway upgrades and paved the way for Triumph Foods to build its $150 million plant. Property that once held only a boarded-up slaughterhouse and dilapidated hog pens now provides jobs for more than 2,000 people. The stream of trucks up and down Stockyards Expressway rarely slows.
Another industrial neighbor — Nestlé Purina — has become one of the city’s premier employers. The company may use the Beaver Street access for employee parking.
The stockyards industrial area has achieved steady growth while still providing a welcome environment for the existing stockyards, grain elevators and heavy industry.
Beaver Street may not look like much now, but given the Port Authority’s track record, things will soon be shaking.
Business editor Susan Mires writes a weekly column. She can be reached
at susanm@npgco.com.
