The City of Glenwood Springs was awarded a $1 million grant by the Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) for their upcoming reconstruction project on Blake Avenue.
The $1 million grant funds come from state severance tax proceeds and will pay for utility upgrades on Blake Avenue, which will make up part of a larger set of restorations and improvements for the street.
“Having these DOLA grants allows us to accomplish a lot of our goals,” City Engineer Ryan Gordon said. “The rate of inflation and costs is exceeding the money coming in, so it makes it difficult. These grants are really critical to be able to bridge those budget shortfalls.”
Gordon said obtaining the grant has been a six-month process between putting together an application, interviewing with DOLA representatives in mid-February and waiting for a response.
DOLA’s award letter to Mayor Ingrid Wussow states that the grant was awarded based on a variety of factors, including “its connection to energy impact, degree of need, measurable outcomes, amount of request, relationship to community goals, level of local match and community support, management capacity, resiliency and readiness to go.”
Conditions for the grant include a roughly $1 million match from the city, which will make up part of the $3-$3.5 million overall cost for the reconstruction project. The City of Glenwood Springs’ contribution will come from its local infrastructure fund, which is funded through sales tax. The city has also received additional funding for the project from the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority.
“It (the grant) is part of our Blake phase one project, which is infrastructure repairs from 24th street to 27th street,” Gordon said. “The DOLA grant specifically is for most of our underground utilities and infrastructure.”
The project’s boundaries cover the stretch of Blake Avenue between 24th and 27th Street, including the connecting 24th and 26th Street roadways onto Colorado Highway 82.
City of Glenwood Springs Public Information Officer Bryana Starbuck explained that there are three parts to phase one of the reconstruction project: Below-street utility and pothole-prevention work, surface road repair, and above-ground connectivity for pedestrians and bicyclists. Future phases of the project will consider a master plan for the 13th-to-27th-Street-stretch of Blake Avenue.
Gordon said that the area from 24th to 27th street doesn’t have much stormwater infrastructure, and that the money from DOLA will be used for brand-new stormwater collection system upgrades, which will make up the utility phase of the Blake Avenue project.
“There are some really antiquated water lines along 26th street … and (we will be) upsizing and repairing some of the sewer laterals along Blake, and then a short section of new sewer in 24th Street,” he said. “Additionally, the dollar money will be used for electrical infrastructure. This section of road has no overhead or pedestrian safety lighting at all, and so part of this project is to include electrical lines to support that overhead and pedestrian lighting for pedestrian safety.”
Outside of that first phase, the overall Blake Avenue project consists of completely “redoing and rebuilding that entire stretch of road,” according to Gordon.
“That section of Blake has more potholes than road,” he continued. “Our plan is to fully remove not only asphalt, but the filling subgrade beneath it and fully rebuild the roads entirely.”
Another highlight of the overall project will be an 8-to-10-foot-wide concrete multi-use path in the same stretch of road, which will predominantly serve as pedestrian and biking infrastructure, which is currently missing from 24th to 27th Street.
“We want to start to build and fix these areas of town that don’t have good biking and pedestrian facilities,” Gordon said. “This will connect the BRT station at 27th Street to more of Glenwood’s existing biking and pedestrian infrastructure.”
The west side of Grand Avenue in Glenwood Springs already has a well-established biking and pedestrian path that runs through the Rio Grande trail. The city’s hope with this project is to create an equally accessible path on the other side of Grand Avenue.
“We have an overall goal for the Blake corridor to make it the predominant biking-pedestrian route on the east side of Grand Avenue,” he said. “We don’t have something similar on the east side, so Blake is going to be that conduit. This is the first step in making sure we have really good, high-quality pedestrian biking facilities for people to use.”
Gordon said the grant has also given the city an opportunity to “stretch those infrastructure dollars” by considering the extension of a water line branch to bring a fire hydrant between Ace Hardware and Community Thrift & Treasure, as that area is considered a “fire hydrant desert.”
“This is an opportunity to improve public safety by stretching those infrastructure dollars,” Gordon said.
Community response and public input
The letters from DOLA states that the project’s “community support” was one of the factors that qualified it for the grant.
“Throughout this project (on) the design of Blake, we’ve had multiple rounds of community meetings,” Gordon said. “We’ve had both meetings at CMC Blake center … we’ve had several pop-up meetings more locally in the neighborhoods. And specifically for this session, engineering staff and others have reached out and talked to most, if not all, of the property owners and residents along that stretch to get their input and talk about the impacts to … their properties (and) the neighborhood in general.”
Gordon said the engineering team then took some of the feedback and suggestions they received from those meetings and incorporated them into the project design.
One of the considerations they took from the public’s comments is which parts of Blake Avenue should function as one-way streets. Right now, 26th to 27th Street on Blake runs one-way toward the south; the city is considering expanding the one-way rule to be from 24th to 27th Street.
“This final design reflects the various stages of public comment,” Starbuck said. “This section of Blake is not in good shape, it is actively in very bad shape.”
Next steps
The Blake Street reconstruction project is currently out to bid. Glenwood Springs City Council will award the project to a contractor during their April 4 regular session.
“We are going to start construction maybe as soon as the middle of April, but certainly this calendar year,” Gordon said. He added that the city anticipates completing phase one of the project before the end of the year.
The Post Independent will continue to report on this project as more information becomes available. Future updates from the city will include detailed lists of the project’s design features, a start date, and information on the impacts on the traveling public.
For more information about the project, visit cogs.us/blake. Questions can be directed to the City of Glenwood Springs Engineering department, or to Gordon at ryan.gordon@cogs.us.
“We really want to make sure that anybody who has questions gets them answered,” Gordon said. “We’re happy to have a conversation (through) either phone call or email, or even to meet someone in front of their house or on-site or someplace else. We really want to have good engagement so people feel any issues are being addressed.”
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Author: Post Independent | Citizen Telegram