HAYWARD — Lightning-fast Internet speeds and connections may be possible within three years as Hayward moves ahead with a project to construct a nearly 20-mile, fiber-optic loop through the city.

“When you talk about communications and look at the needs now and in the future, fiber connectivity is really kind of a necessary infrastructure for the community just like water, sewer and electricity,” Hayward Economic Development Manager Micah Hinkle said in an interview.

“High-speed Internet is what makes the world go round,” he said.

The multiyear effort got a boost in September after the U.S. Department of Commerce awarded the city a three-year, $2.74 million grant to install about 11 miles of new conduit, or pipe-like tubes, along with fiber-optic cables from a city-selected Internet service provider.

The city, in turn, must provide matching funds to supplement the grant, including construction, project management and staffing costs.

Tentative plans outlined in the federal grant call for the private service provider to lease either fiber optic cable strands or physical space in the new conduit.

The project will also leverage about nine miles of existing fiber optic conduit along portions of Mission Boulevard, West Winton Avenue and Clawiter Road. That conduit primarily consists of city-owned cables for traffic lights, city economic development specialist Paul Nguyen said.

“The city government paves roads, provides access to highways and provides the pipes that brings water to your tap, so the conduit is just basically the tube that the fiber will be in,” Nguyen said.

“The tube is the most expensive part of the Internet service because companies have to dig and trench to build that tube, so the city, seeing the need for broadband connectivity for economic and just community development, is willing to put in that tube to encourage private investment and service,” he said.

Lit San Leandro, which helped San Leandro create its own fiber-optic loop, was the city’s preferred partner and Internet service provider when the federal grant application was submitted in June 2015. Talks slowed, however, after Lit San Leandro CEO Jim Morrison died suddenly in February.

Discussions are ongoing with Lit San Leandro, although other major Internet service providers have reached out and offered to be partners in Hayward’s project, Hinkle said.

Many telecommunications companies, including AT&T, Comcast and Level 3 Communications, already have fiber-optic cables running through Hayward, Hinkle said. What the city is attempting to do, he added, is to encourage further public investment by building affordable fiber.

“A lot of times, the fiber that is available through the standard commercial marketplace is very expensive,” Hinkle said.

“That’s really the difference with this project, and that’s why the city has really looked at it to say, ‘We need to find a way to bring higher connectivity to our community and, in particular, our business community,’ ” he said.

The move will help the city gain a competitive edge over potential business sites in other Bay Area cities, Hinkle said.

“Having a site or community that has tremendous amount of broadband connectivity is not the be-all and end-all,” Nguyen said.

“It is one puzzle piece in the bigger picture of what makes a city or location a business-friendly or business-conducive environment — there’s access to transportation, access to workforce and real estate costs. Each site selector has a list of things that they look for before deciding where they end up, and our jobs as economic developers is to make sure Hayward has a check in each one of those boxes,” he said.

Technology companies will not be the only ones that could benefit from faster Internet speeds.

The city’s public-private partnership could reduce the costs for businesses already paying for faster broadband speed, but will particularly benefit small- to medium-sized businesses in the city’s older industrial parks, where infrastructure needs to be updated.

“We have a little bit of everything, from traditional heavy-duty manufacturers of metal parts and equipment to artisan food makers, and access to broadband means something in all of those business models,” Nguyen said.

“We’re not necessarily trying to attract tech, as it’s traditionally considered, but we’re trying to attract what we call advanced industries, an amalgamation of over 50 business sectors that are tied together by the investment that they put into their people and offer good-paying jobs at every level of education,” he said.

The city is also creating a master plan for the project that, among other things, will map out proposed business models, projected costs, possible fiber-optic loop routes, and how it should be built out over the next three years.

The study by Maryland-based consultant CTC Energy and Technology, budgeted at no more than $108,000, began in March and should be complete by January.

“We have to stop, dig a little deeper and say, ‘How is this going to be put together in more of a comprehensive manner,’ ” Hinkle said.

Contact Darin Moriki at 510-293-2480 or follow him at Twitter.com/darinmoriki.