The Board of Aldermen approved a request to advertise for bids for the East Jackson Avenue streetscape project, which aims to make Eastern side of the Square more pedestrian friendly at its meeting on Tuesday.
The project will widen the sidewalks on East Jackson Ave., reduce parking spaces in the area and construct permanent outdoor dining. 28 of the 45 parking spaces in the areas will instead be used for either dining space or turned into wider sidewalk space.
City Chief of Operations Bart Robinson said that four business owners with businesses on East Jackson Ave. voiced their support for the project in a meeting with city officials last week. The business owners were in favor of moving forward with the project now because they hope it will help boost profits while their businesses are still under the strain of the pandemic, according to Robinson.
“They unanimously said, ‘Look, we’re hurting about as bad as we can,’” Robinson said. “If we were going to do the project, they wanted us to do it now.”
Mayor Robyn Tannehill said the city did not talk with the business owners about cost or how long the project will take, and the city does not yet have an estimate on a timeline for the project.
“Our questions for them were more along the lines of timing,” Tannehill said. “You know, when would we be hurting your business the least if we went forward with this?”
The estimated cost of the project is approximately $750,000. $250,000 come from a continuation of the sidewalk project that the city was already working on. Robinson suggested that the remaining $500,000 could come from the city’s 2% for parking garage debt service or the Oxford Trust for Parking Garage debt service.
The 2% and Oxford Trust money was originally planned as a reserve for the parking garage debt service should the parking revenues not cover the Parking Garage debt service. The reserves can be used to fund any project that the Board of Aldermen deems appropriate.
