Aurora is moving ahead with plans for converting New York Street and Galena Boulevard to two ways downtown.
Aldermen on the Infrastructure and Technology Committee Monday voted 4-0 to recommend a $175,300 contract with HR Green Inc. for the project. City officials decided to put the two-way conversion planned for New York and Galena – from Lake Street to Broadway – and streetscape work along Broadway between New York and Downer Place, on the same contract.
Ken Schroth, Aurora’s Public Works director, said the projects were combined because as part of the conversion, work would have to be done at Galena and Broadway, and New York and Broadway. Any work on Broadway requires approval from the Illinois Department of Transportation because Broadway is state Route 25.
“There is a lot of permitting to do, and we thought we would do it all together,” Schroth told committee members.
The conversion to two-ways would be one of the last left downtown – it’s barely a memory now that all the major streets in downtown were at one time one-way, for at least some 50 years.
The stretches along Galena and New York were left to the last because both the Paramount Theatre on Galena, and Hollywood Casino on New York, had to be consulted because traffic flow is tied heavily into their facilities.
Schroth said both worked with the city on how the conversion could be done. He said the city still will have a follow up meeting with casino officials to finalize their traffic counts for valet parking, and how that would work.
“This will all be part of the engineering,” he said.
The work on Broadway will include widening the current 9-foot lanes of traffic to 11 feet. Doing that will cut down the size of the sidewalk along Broadway some, and there also will be a loss of some of the parking. But officials said it would make traffic safer, and would cut down on the sideswipe accidents that dent doors and knock off mirrors on cars parked along Broadway.
“It’s worth it,” said Ald. Judd Lofchie, 10th Ward, a committee member.
City officials are hoping to compensate for the loss of on-street parking with renovation of parking lots downtown, hoping to add spaces that way.
The reformed streetscape also would change how trees and other plantings are done along Broadway. The current trees – which are contained in concrete cubes and often die – would be put in larger areas in a different planting system, city officials said.
Because the project is not engineered yet, officials do not know the cost. But Schroth said city officials are working with an estimated cost of about $735,000 for the two-way conversion, and another $1 million for the Broadway streetscape work.
If the full City Council eventually approves the engineering contract, city officials and the engineering firm will put together more detailed plans for the work. At that point, they will sit down with the state and start to put together more specific numbers, Schroth said.
It is planned to be in the 2020 budget, with the work being done in late 2020.
slord@tribpub.com
