News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Cookeville City Council will considering applying for an additional grant to install sidewalks on Spring Street, bringing the total project to potentially three phases.
Community Planning Director Jon Ward said the original scope of the project from 2014 would construct sidewalks from Old Kentucky Road to Broad Street. He said they were awarded a second grant in 2021 to break the work into a second phase, which will span Raider Drive to Denton Avenue.
Ward said they have asked T-DOT to consider another revision to the project scope to break it into a third phase.
“The grant funding we have available now is not enough to finish the project,” Ward said. “So the costs are more than the grant would fund. So we’ve asked T-DOT to consider revisions to scope and to phase this in. And that’s how we got the first segment we have now.”
Ward said the third phase would be a $1.25 million project with a 90-10 match from the city. The previous two phases were 95-5 matches.
City Manager James Mills said the city has currently invested about $500,000 into the sidewalk project. He said when the project was first bid in 2014/2015, the cost to do the entire project was just $1.2 million. He said the council at that time agreed to pay an additional $200,000 to get the sidewalks to downtown.
“For whatever reason it languished for years and years, finally it was able to get started and then it came in triple on what it was expected to do,” Mills said. “So we cut back the project, T-DOT allowed us to, and did this first phase which still costs more than the $1 million. The stuff in this that’s really high is traffic control which is amazing. But we talked to Blake, and he doesn’t want our guys doing traffic control on 45-mile-per-hour streets where people are driving 60 miles. So you’re going to have to pay for traffic control.”
Mills said the city has already been approved for the second phase. He said the goal would be to bid out both projects at the same time.
Mill said the city is able to walk away from the project, but it would still have to pay back several hundred thousand dollars. He said they believe at this point, it could be cheaper just to finish the project than just pay back the money to T-DOT.
