Hospital to create new parking

MARENGO — Compass Memorial Healthcare will create angle parking along Western Avenue for emergency room patients.

The hospital’s construction project has closed streets, disrupted the usual flow of traffic and created the need for new spaces.

The Marengo City Council approved the plan for parking on the Western Avenue side of the the hospital last month.

The proposed parking spots would be 18 feet deep, CEO Barry Goettsch said, but Councilman Travis Schlabach requested that the hospital make the spaces 19 feet deep instead.

“I would like all the room we can get,” said Schlabach. A full-size crew cab truck will take two feet of the roadway if the spaces are only 18 feet deep, Schlabach said.

“We want to go as far to the building as we possibly can,” said Goettsch. He doesn’t want trucks sticking out into the street.

Goettsch thinks there’s enough space between the hospital and the street to make the parking spaces 19 feet deep, he said.

The new parking area will be returned to its current state after construction is completed and the normal parking areas are accessible again.