ST. JOHNS, Mich. — The St. Johns street improvement work for 2021 will start next week.
Selected streets will get new asphalt, among other things. Phase one of the project will begin at the St. Johns City Park and two neighborhoods, Hawthorn Grove and Johnella Estates and is expected to be complete by Memorial Day.
"We have some streets through the park that we haven't spent a lot of effort on in a long, long time, and our park is used by so many people in the city. We have concerts in the park all summer long," said St. Johns Community Development Director, Dave Kudwa. "So with all that use of the pavilion and performance shell, we wanted to do more to improve the roads and add some sidewalks and just help the pedestrian traffic in that area."
Phase two will begin in early summer and finish by late September or early October. That phase will include the improvement of Emmons Street and Prospect Street.
"There's a little bit more work that we need to do to those, so we'll do those in the summer. We'll probably start late June, early July and hopefully finish by the middle of August," Kudwa said.
The residents of St. Johns voted to pass a millage in 2013 to pay for street improvements through 2018 and then and again in 2017 to support the street improvements for the next five years.
"Before we actually went for the vote, we took a map to the people and said, 'Hey, what do you think about these streets?' And, we picked the streets based on the four quadrants in the city. So, we try to do work in all four quadrants," Kudwa said, "and we try to hit both local streets and major streets so that everyone feels some of the impact of funding."
The city generates roughly $650,000 per year for street improvements. The park improvements will include the addition of parking and signage, new asphalt and drainage, and the improvement of sidewalks. The park project improvements will be funded by a combination of the street millage and general fund dollars.
"We estimate with that cost, how much work we can do on a given street. We have some basic processes that we use. We mill off the old asphalt and we put down new asphalt, but we also improve sidewalks, replace sidewalk ramps, curb and gutter, we do base improvements, we install underdrain, all those kinds of things," Kudwa said. "A couple of the streets that we're going to do this year are just going to be an asphalt removal and replacement, and a little bit of sidewalk improvement, because the subdivisions are in pretty good shape, but we have other streets, Emmons and Prospect, that need a little more work than that."
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