Hickory Street will be refigured as early as next spring by the Indiana Department of Transportation to minimize the traffic along the road as much as possible.
At Friday’s Board of Public Works and Safety meeting, board members signed off on the project.
According to INDOT road plans, the existing eastern curb line of Hickory Street will be reconstructed from Market to Main streets to install curb bump outs. A raised splitter island will be constructed just north of the intersection with Market Street. Minor drainage modifications will be made on the east curb line. Pavement markings will be installed in conjunction with the reconstructed curb line and splitter island to convert Hickory Street to one-way traffic.
City Engineer James Emans said it’s an INDOT project but Local Public Agency funds “so it’s partnered through the city for those funds.” The city is not paying for any of the costs of the INDOT project. INDOT is funding the project 100%.
“The project is tied to INDOT’s signalization and the railroad with their crossarms,” Emans said, adding that it will change the parking along Hickory Street between Market and Main to get traffic off the railroad tracks.
He said all the board needed to do was sign the cover sheet so the review process can continue with INDOT.
Mayor Joe Thallemer said he was very familiar with what’s going on.
“They’re actually going to create one-ways off of Center Street, north along Hickory and south along Hickory, at Center Street, as well as put physical barriers in there. They’re not just going to paint. They want to minimize the traffic on Hickory because of the new signals that are going in. They’re trying to make arrangements to allow parking that continues there, but narrow it down to one lane, one-way traffic through there. This is all in an effort to improve the safety in that Hickory Street area where you’ve got freight trains barreling through there several times, 12 times a day, something like that,” Thallemer explained.
He said INDOT has been working on acquiring funding for the project for six years now.
“The new safety signals, which will be larger and they’ll come across from the top, and they’ll be much more adequate and more effective than what we have now,” Thallemer said. “But I think part of the idea is that we don’t want traffic on Hickory and getting trapped with those signals, so they’re coordinating the design of Hickory Street with new signals, as well as timing these lights that are coming through.”
He said the city worked with INDOT on the design, which Emans said was correct.
“I have reviewed their design, the planning department has reviewed the design and we’re comfortable with it,” Emans said.
After the board approved signing off on the project, Thallemer said, “This is something that we’ve been working with INDOT and the railroad for a long time to get finished.”
City Planner Jeremy Skinner said it’s a 2020 project, and he imagined it would start sometime in the spring.
Utilities Superintendent Brian Davison presented the board with an amendment to a contract with Christopher B. Burke Engineering LLC for study of the Kelly Park pond.
“This has to do with that whole south side projects that we’ve been working on over the last few years,” he said.
At a previous board meeting, Davison said they approved a study through Christopher Burke. The amendment presented Friday was for that contract.
“We’re going to do some stormwater sampling. Sort of laying out what they’re going to do and what we’re going to do to help offset some of those costs that we could do in-house,” he said. “This is leading to our end goal of really improving that park and putting that pond back to a fishable pond and making it nice for the community.”
Davison said the Parks and Recreation Department has already done and continues to do a lot of nice work at Kelly Park.
Thallemer said the amendment was a pretty significant addition to the original contract. The additional work is about $31,000, increasing the total estimated fee for the project to $87,000.
Emans said the amendment will cover the change of Christopher Burke assuming a little more responsibility coordinating with their sub-consultants instead of the city doing it. He said the city’s staff will do the sampling required, but will work with Burke on getting answers.
“The end game of all of this work is to better understand how stormwater flow is making it to Kelly pond. We’re trying to identify where the sediment source came from that filled that pond in,” Emans said.
He said the amendment changes the direction of how all the work will be accomplished.
Thallemer said, “I know the Parks Department has been a significant benefactor, as well as the residents on the south side, with some of the work you’ve done to this point, improved the drainage. So this is a pretty expansive project, this is obviously a stormwater project that was probably one of the highest-priority projects that we took on once we started the stormwater utility. And obviously we’ll continue until we get this done.”
Emans said this is the final phase of the project.
“We’ve done all the work upstream of the park to control runoff. We’ve expanded Eisenhower basin significantly. We redirected flow from Tigers Retreat basin over to the Eisenhower basin because we had drainage problems downstream of that and that was part of the projects we did,” Emans said.
He stated drainage pipes were sized and upsized within Pheasant Ridge subdivision that ultimately drains to the Eisenhower basin.
“We had a couple of residents that (during) heavy rain events, their basements were flooded,” Emans said. “We’ve done all of that upstream work. This is really the downstream ends now, and this last piece is to restore that pond to be fishable.”
He said that could happen in the next two to five years.
In other business, the board approved:
• A pay application of $1,902,375 to Kokosing Industrial Inc. for the wastewater plant expansion project; a pay application of $170,412 to Layne Inliner for small diameter sewer rehabilitation work; and a pay application of $47,453 to Insituform Technologies USA LLC for small diameter sewer work, as requested by Davison.
• An agreement with 212 Media Studios to help develop some informational pieces for public education on the ongoing U.S. 30 study, as requested by Thallemer. Cost is $300 per piece, but not to exceed $3,000 total.
“Trying to have good information to the public helps when we engage that public process so that everybody knows what the concerns are, what the proposed solutions might be. So it’s just more of a public education to kind of keep that process as efficient as we can,” Thallemer said.
