Special Board of Aldermen 12-07-2021 Page 26
their thoughts, and we tried to capture those sentiments in this document and essentially what we're here today to do
is to implement that vision.
But before | go down that path, | want to just take a moment and say that this has been a long term plan that | have
heard about that the city has endeavored to do. In fact when | interviewed for this position, Brian McCarthy and |,
during my interview, spent a long time talking about mill cities and how mill cities really needed to use their riverfront
as a value proposition, as a natural asset that these middle cities had that could be used as part of a revitalization
strategy to redevelop their downtown. And it was, you know, in those types of conversations that started way back in
2016 that helped, you know, Director Marchant and | develop the plan that is, again, what we're using as our guide
post. And so what does this plan ultimately capture? It talks about multimodal connectivity, access to the river,
recreation, green space, environmental stewardship, environmental floodplain resiliency, environmental stewardship,
and economic development.
So after the plan was developed, we started with design and we put together a project team. We have VHB,
Halverson Design, Hayner Swanson, HL Turner, Fitz Myer Tauchi, and actually tomorrow we'll be interviewing
construction managers and hopefully a selection will be made sometime in the month of December and a contract
sometime in January so we can continue on with our timeline. But Halverson Design has been with us from the
beginning. They actually were the landscape architect that led the planning initiative back in 2016/ 2017.
So the project area. So the plan talked about four different quadrants. We're really focusing on quadrants two and
three of the plan and it's basically the parkway with the Veterans Memorial Parkway formerly known as the Broad
Street Parkway all the way to BAE. If you can see my cursor here, it's really what we refer to as the pedestrian pan-
am bridge.
So Resolution 21-193 before you tonight is a resolution seeking bond authorization for $21 million to implement the
Riverfront plan as described and to be considered a TIF project. The project before you would be utilizing TIF funds
generated through the TIF program and only TIF dollars will be used for this project. So | just want to make that
abundantly clear because | think there might have been some confusion about that.
So one thing | do want to talk about is the focus and the priority. So the focus and the priority will be the west side of
the river from Main Street Bridge to the parkway bridge. Due to the construction climate that we're in, currently I'm not
inclined to commit the entire project as presented but we'll take a phased approach and whatever available budget we
have and in consultation with the construction manager will focus on doing projects on the east side of the river. I'll
talk a little bit more about that. So we're looking at a $21 million project. We have about soft costs of $4.5 million.
Hard construction target of $15 million. We have a contingency of $1.5 million, which is the $21 million. The project
that we have conceptualized that I'm about to go through is above this $21 million figure. We will do the best we can
to get as much for the community as it can within the budget that we're allotted. The construction climate that we
have right now has been very challenging to say the least. | sent a communication to this body a few weeks ago
pointing out that construction prices are going up and it's very hard to forecast right now. So | would recommend
taking a little bit more of a conservative approach and then once we understand where we actually have available
budget, we look to add on some of the projects that I'll be talking about.
So here's the list of the projects that was identified in the plan. As you can see, a Pine Street extension crossing of
about $40,000; Factory Street extension improvements, which is $862,000; Parc de Renaissance a $4 million project;
Water Street improvements at $310,000; 4 Water Street $1.76 million; Bicentennial Park improvements at $583,000;
Riverside BBQ at $1.7 million; shared use path in between at $125,000; substation screening at $180,000; boardwalk
and dock $1.37 million; existing shared path improvements $230,000; Cotton Mill ADA ramp $576,000. That is one of
the projects that | believe our city engineer Mr. Hudson had mentioned that earlier that | would be talking about.
That’s a project that we need to prioritize to ensure that we get it done. A pathway around BAE is $600,000; construct
shared path at 60 Main Street, which is $530,000; widen the existing ramp that's their $130,000; boardwalk around 60
Main Street $1.3 million; lighting at $700,000, and then a pedestrian bridge. So one of the things that we discovered
as we Started design originally, we wanted to rehabilitate the pan am pedestrian crossing that's currently in existence.
So we were thinking we would use the existing bridge that's there. As we studied that initiative over the last couple of
years, it became apparent that the life of that is too far gone and it would be wiser and more efficient for us over a
lifespan of the project to actually for us to put a brand new pedestrian bridge in so we're providing for that at $1.7
million.
So I'm just going to quickly just go back here because | think | skipped over timeline and | want to make sure | catch
that. So | put a quick timeline in that kind of shows the master planning effort that took place in 2016 through 2017.
Then we as a community decided if we wanted to pursue this initiative, we really needed to adopt a TIF. So that's
