Much-anticipated upgrades to several downtown streets are making headway, although actual construction is unlikely to start until 2021.

Concept work for seven downtown streets is complete and was approved by the city government last year. The next step is engineering design, and city Engineering Director Hameed Malik has bid awards for five of the streets going before an Augusta Commission committee Tuesday.

The work couldn’t happen soon enough for Matt Aitken, a commercial Realtor who has several downtown properties on the market.

“All this construction coming down the pike – it’s past due,” said Aitken, a former Augusta commissioner. “It’s going to enhance our downtown second-to-none.”

Of the seven streets, the Broad Street project is so eagerly anticipated that Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce President Sue Parr recently asked to move it up on the state's Transportation Investment Act schedule. Malik said the project is so large and complex that moving it ahead would have raised the cost as much as 60 percent.

The projects will be among the last to be built with the 10-year transportation sales tax, which voters approved in 2012. City leaders are developing a new project list to persuade voters next year to extend the tax another year.

Going for committee approval Tuesday is a $2.1 million bid award for engineering design of the Broad Street project to Savannah-based engineers Hussey Gay Bell, one of just three firms to bid. The firm's work includes the red brick plaza along River Street in Savannah.

According to the state’s TIA website, the project is budgeted $25 million, to be used to improve and reconstruct curbs, gutters, sidewalks and storm sewer systems from Sand Bar Ferry Road to Lake Olmstead. Malik said the project’s main focus will likely be on Broad between 15th and Fifth streets and in Olde Town.

The project includes removing the 1970s-era sunken parking bays in the Broad Street median. Inflation and other factors have driven costs up, Malik said. Construction alone is now estimated to cost at least $30 million, and work on Broad Street is likely to be included on Phase 2 of the TIA, he said.

Already completed on Broad Street were TIA-funded repairs to an Augusta Canal bridge, while complex, ongoing bridge repairs on Broad Street over the convergence of the canal's two levels is set to be finished by June, Malik said.

Other bid awards going for approval Tuesday include one for $685,061 to Augusta-based Infrastructure System Management for engineering design of the Greene Street TIA project. The firm is the latest venture by former Engineering Director Abie Ladson, who left city government in 2017.

The Greene Street project’s overall budget is $9.9 million and includes reconstruction of curbs, gutters, sidewalks and storm sewer systems between 13th and East Boundary streets.

A $428,182 bid award to Cranston Engineering to design upgrades to Fifth Street between Laney-Walker Boulevard and Reynolds Street also goes for approval Tuesday. The $5.1 million project includes resurfacing and reconstructing curbs, gutters, sidewalks and storm sewers. State documents say $2 million will be needed to acquire rights of way along the road.

Clark Patterson Lee, which has an office in Suwanee, Ga., was selected to engineer improvements to Sixth Street for $228,325. The $6.4 million project has $1.5 million designated for rights of way and includes curb, gutter, sidewalk and storm sewer system work along Sixth Street between Laney-Walker Boulevard and Reynolds Street.

Engineers Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood, which has an Augusta office, was selected for the 13th Street project, which includes curb, gutter, sidewalk and storm system repairs and reconstruction between R.A. Dent Boulevard and Reynolds Street. The firm's bid is $279,000 to design the $3 million project.

The city has already awarded a bid for a 15th Street project with pedestrian improvements downtown that could include a bike lane and multi-use trail, Malik said. Not yet awarded is design work on the Telfair Street project, but that's set to happen soon, he said.

The engineering design work will build on the $1.2 million concept plan developed by Atlanta landscape architecture firm Cooper Carry that commissioners approved last year. The engineering firms will use the Cooper Carry plan “as a baseline,” with some components likely to be dropped or changed because of cost, viability or other concerns, Malik said.

“As we develop the actual design, things may change,” he said. “We have to verify there’s no additional information, such as utilities that may not have been picked up. Concept is concept. Actual design is whether we can construct it or not.”

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