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CORALVILLE
IRL, bridge, roadwork projects detailed
Reporter: Gigi Wood
Coralville officials outlined flood recovery progress last week.
Kelly Hayworth, Coralville’s city administrator, updated the city council on progress at its work session Nov. 10 and presented an overview of projects to the Iowa City Area Chamber of Commerce’s local government affairs committee Nov. 12.
Of the $54 million needed to complete the flood recovery work recommended to the city, $37 million has been secured through the state’s I-JOBS funding and the federal Economic Development Administration.
The first step of the project involves reconstructing the Clear Creek bridge along First Avenue, adjacent to Milio’s and about a block south of the Iowa River Power Co. restaurant. The bridge will be raised and widened to accommodate five lanes of traffic. The nearby railroad bridge will also be raised and widened.
“The construction of both the railroad bridge and the Clear Creek bridge, if we have water coming down Clear Creek, it’s a restriction point there,” Mr. Hayworth said. “We were able after the ’93 floods to widen out the creek and that enables that area to drain much quicker. We received funding for the Clear Creek bridge, which will be wider and will also accommodate more vehicles.”
The fifth lane will act as a turning lane to help alleviate traffic traveling south along First Avenue and turning east onto Highway 6. First Avenue will be widened and improved from Highway 6 north to Sixth Street, near the Delimart gas station, with sidewalks added.
As a result, First Avenue will be straightened and lanes widened.
The city expects to take bids for bridge work in February with a construction start date in May. Bids for the remainder of the First Avenue work will be taken in May.
“That work is all slated to be completed in one year,” he said. “There will be a lot work with adjacent businesses because obviously there will be disruption but we will keep First Avenue open the entire time and will be providing signage and access to every business along the way.”
The creek will also be widened, and once complete will take up some of the land where Mekong restaurant once stood. A trail connector that will allow pedestrians to cross First Avenue at the bridge will extend along the creek.
Two CDBG projects were not funded, for $5 million each. The funding would have been used to protect Clear Creek and add pump stations.
“So that is an issue; there is the possibility of another infrastructure round of CDBG because they’re expecting some money to come back from all of these (home) buyouts,” Mr. Hayworth said.
The Iowa River Landing District will also be improved. Flood mitigation measures will be added between the Coralville Marriott and the Iowa River, including a wetlands area and a berm along Edgewater Drive that will extend to Interstate 80 to protect a MidAmerican Energy substation that serves Coralville and Iowa City residents. The project will add wetlands walkways and flood walls around the river side of the Marriott.
The district projects will be subject to three sets of guidelines because the city will receive funding to buy flooded properties from three sources, the Federal Emergency Management Administration’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program and Iowa Homeland Security. CDBG has not yet set its rules.
“The HMGP program has very strict guidelines on what you can do on these (flooded) properties and right now those guidelines go clear down to you can’t even have a paved trail on those lots,” he said.
Coralville hopes to put a trail on or near the berm along Edgewater Drive with a comfort station along the way. The various guidelines will dictate where those elements can be and the quality of the trail.
The restrictions will make it difficult to provide an Americans with Disabilities Act-approved accessible restroom and will make it more difficult for the city to maintain the trail. Different guidelines require various trail widths, as well.
“All those properties we already purchased will not have those guidelines so we need to pull out the map and locate reasonable spaces where we can actually do some of these things,” he said. “It’s making it a little difficult to know what we can do and what we can’t do.”
There will be public forums scheduled for the district plans, which will include a small marina. CBJ
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