The Trussville City Council unanimously passed resolution 2012-034, approving Mayor Gene Melton to sign a grant agreement for right of way acquisition for the Chalkville Road widening project. The project extends from Highway 11 to Vann Circle. “The project is moving along quickly,” Melton said in a report. “Eighty percent of engineering is done and we are entering the phase to acquire right of way from property owners in the area.”
The road widening includes a right turn lane from North Chalkville onto Main Street which would require the city to acquire the Braden’s Furniture building.
That corner has been considered the linchpin in downtown redevelopment. About a year ago, a private developer had an agreement with the store owner, Billy Braden, to exercise their right to purchase the property. Those plans stalled after news that a thrift store may locate in the former Food World building went public.
This time, the city will be negotiating with Braden using money from a federal grant.
“The plans show that the road will go through the current Braden’s Furniture building,” Braden said
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The project is federally funded by money set aside for mitigating traffic congestion. The funds for the project are available until 2023 but the city wants to move things along at a faster pace.
“The faster the engineering is done, the sooner we can get started,” said Melton. “We are moving our project up, we want to start construction by 2014 and end it by 2015.”
According to Melton, there are several steps that must be taken with federally funded project; the process is similar to what the city is doing with the Greenways project.
“We don’t want this to take 13 years,” Melton said. “But it is paid for by federal dollars and we have to go through all the hoops.”
Melton says the next priority is to hire an environmental engineer, something he hopes to have more information on at the next council meeting.
“This will involve a county drainage project as well,” Wayne Taylor, the council president said. “We hope to do all the projects in one go to avoid inconveniences.”
“We will have an opportunity to use federal money to landscape that corner after the work is complete,” Taylor said. “Hopefully, that will give private developers a glimpse of what we would like to see in downtown Trussville going forward. They never lost interest, but with the economy and other factors, they wanted to see which direction the downtown area would take. With the Downtown Redevelopment Authority in place and the downtown master plan close to completion, I think the private developers are impressed.”