The city of Aurora is moving forward with a long-planned project to beautify the streetscape along Broadway downtown.
Alongside the work on Broadway, which will stretch from Benton Street to New York Street, the city is also planning to convert the downtown stretches of Galena Boulevard and New York Street into two-way roads. All the major streets in downtown used to be one-way, for at least around 50 years.
City staff are proposing to extend an existing contract with engineering firm HR Green to help get the project fully designed and permitted through the Illinois Department of Transportation. The proposal is set to go before the Aurora City Council for final approval next week.
If the proposed amendment is approved, it would be the fifth such change to the contract since it was first entered into in 2016. The contract originally was just to design two-way conversions for the downtown stretches of Downer Place, Galena Boulevard and New York Street, with the Broadway improvements added on later.
Last year, Aurora Mayor John Laesch delayed the Broadway streetscape project over concerns about the budget.
At his recent State of the City Address, Laesch said the plan was to use a $3 million state grant that the city had received for the project to instead pay for the Galena Boulevard and New York Street two-way conversion projects, but the state denied that request. So now, he said, the project is moving forward again.
On April 13, the Aurora City Council’s Information and Technology Committee unanimously voted to recommend for approval the latest change to the contract with HR Green.
Since the project’s pause, the Illinois Department of Transportation has sent Aurora a list of updates that need to be made to the project’s design, according to city Director of Public Works Jason Bauer.
“Things change rather rapidly at IDOT, so if you are 18 months out or so from the last time you looked at any of those things, you’ve got to look at them again,” he said.
The goal is to get all of the changes made and to send the plans back to the Department of Transportation for final review, Bauer said. Hopefully, then, a contract for construction of the project can be awarded in late fall or early winter, he said.
Bauer called this project “basically the remainder of the big things that are going on in downtown,” with the exception of the New York Street bridge rehabilitation project planned for 2028 or 2029. But, he said, this project needs to be done first because the two-way streets are needed to take the bridge out of service.
Through the Broadway streetscape project, basically everything from the roadway to the face of buildings is expected to be removed, according to Bauer. Then everything will be put back in new, he said, including concrete, brick pavers and street lights.
Some adjustments to the roadway of Broadway is also expected. Bauer said the road would be losing street parking on the northern-most block to make way for two full-sized turn lanes. Those new turn lanes will also mean that the northern part of Broadway will see the least amount of beautification, Bauer said. So, the sidewalks in that area won’t be expanded like sidewalks on the southern blocks will, he said, although they will still get some plantings.
Moving further south, there will be wider greenspace areas along the sidewalk to further separate pedestrians from the roadway, according to Bauer.
Some work for this project has already been completed, he said, including much of the underground work. Plus, the state recently resurfaced the road.
As for the conversion of Galena Boulevard and New York Street from one-way to two-way, Bauer said he doesn’t expect there to be much of an impact on the traffic on those roads, at least not once people get used to the change. Between the two roads, there will still be the same amount of lanes going in each direction, he said.
But, it should ease congestion along Broadway, Bauer said.
On Tuesday, the proposal was reviewed by the Aurora City Council’s Committee of the Whole, which sets the following week’s City Council meeting agenda. That committee placed the item on the City Council meeting’s consent agenda, which is typically reserved for routine or non-controversial items that are all approved with a single vote, meaning it is likely to pass.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
