Monterey Receives TDOT Grant For Commercial Ave

T-DOT has awarded Monterey a community transportation planning grant to strategize future growth along Commercial Avenue.

Cultural Administrator Rafferty Cleary said during the aldermen’s Monday meeting that the grant will allow the city to create a large series of projects to work on for years to come. Cleary said the grant involves a lot of public input when creating the future plans.

“This is a grant that’s focusing on Commercial Avenue between Poplar Street and Crossville Street,” Cleary said. “And it’s going to look at providing us a vision for improvement projects that we can do years down the road. And this is kind of like a ten, fifteen year plan, maybe even longer than that.”

Cleary said the grant is worth up to $200,000 and will require a ten percent match from the city. He said the project will address aesthetics, sidewalks, road alignment, traffic calming measures, and more.

“All types of recommendations will come from this type of plan that they’re going to do for us,” Cleary said.

Cleary said TDOT will handle the initial work such as choosing consultants, surveying land, and creating a budget. Cleary said this is the first time the city has received the grant after applying two or three times before now.

Cleary said he is waiting to hear back from T-DOT before the project can move forward.

“I do know that once we get the budget we’ll have to send them that ten percent check relatively quickly,” Cleary said. “That’s based on the email that we got, so we’ll have to keep an eye out on that.”