WC Iowa News

The City of Carroll council recently discussed a major downtown street project that has been experiencing delays for almost 20 years.

The Downtown Streetscape Concept Plan was initially created in 2003 and has been going on for almost two decades. It includes work on Highway 30 between Highway 71 and West Street and Clark Street and Grant Road. Phase 11, which is the current iteration of the plan, encompasses replacing all the four-foot sidewalks and increasing them to five-foot walkways, painting the sidewalks and crosswalks wherever applicable, removing old street lighting, putting in new street lighting and redesigning some of the placements of them, and doing some storm gutter and curb adjustments as necessary. 

"The very preliminary estimate for this project is about $1.7 million, and it really depends on what is included," Carroll Director of Public Works Randall Krauel said at the Dec. 12 city council meeting. "Most of the previous phases for the streetscape have been financed through tax increment financing, internal loans, tax increment financing. That would be the proposal for this project also and at this point, there has been some debt created and mostly repaid for the design work or the design contract and then an additional million dollars in the current fiscal year. The current capital improvement program includes the construction of this phase in fiscal year 24, but during your strategic planning session, the result came out moving that back to fiscal year 25."

The council members were unsure of some aspects of the project. There were a lot of areas where the new sidewalks and curbs might take away some parking from the businesses, and a couple of concerns with how new and moved streetlamps would be properly wired and connected. They talked about potential cost savings with just widening some sidewalks and not fully replacing them, as four-foot sidewalks are still ADA-compliant.

The biggest issue came with the cost. The initial estimate of $1.7 is very early and doesn't include an itemized cost of any aspect of the project. With construction delayed for 18 months from the current discussions, council members were not keen on the very unstructured and flexible budget that could not be promised for the project. 

The council voted to scrap the project and Phase 11, with a plan to come back with new projects as needed.