Mounds, at last, for Pettibone

The city will heighten dirt mounds and perhaps plant a few trees along Pettibone Road as part of the $12.68 million Pettibone improvement project.

The mounds will screen Pettibone residents from cluster homes in "Signature 2," a subdivision formerly called Sycamore Estates just southeast of Pettibone-Liberty Road.

Pettibone residents have been waiting a long time for the screening. They believe the Signature 2 developers, not the city, should have installed it years ago.

"(The developers) put mounds in, but residents felt they weren't what they wanted and needed and what was promised there," Councilman John Scott said.

The developers are Cameratta Properties Ltd. in Broadview Heights and DiSanto Enterprises Inc. in Solon, the same team that built Signature of Solon.

On Tuesday, city Engineer John Busch said he didn't know how much the additional landscaping will cost taxpayers.

City Council approved Sycamore Estates in 2000.

A 1992 court-facilitated agreement between the city and property owner said that any developer building houses on the site must provide landscaping along Pettibone and Liberty to screen Sycamore from neighboring houses.

But Scott said the mounds Cameratta-DiSanto installed aren't tall enough to screen Signature 2 houses from Pettibone and Liberty. They also believe Cameratta-DiSanto didn't plant enough trees on the mounds.

Further, Liberty residents have complained to their councilwoman, Susan Drucker, that Cameratta-DiSanto never installed landscaping to block a pool in Signature 2 from their properties.

Drucker said the Signature 2 site or landscape plan showed the screening. She said she called Cameratta and DiSanto about it years ago but by then they had sold the property to builders.

Busch said the city doesn't plan to install landscaping along Liberty, only Pettibone.

Joseph Cameratta, owner of Cameratta Properties, and Michael DiSanto, president of DiSanto Enterprises, didn't return calls.

The city never sued Cameratta-DiSanto over the mounds and trees, but that wasn't the case when it came to a traffic signal....