Courtesy of Manhattan Public Works
Falling within the city’s annual Asphalt Street Maintenance Program, Public Works Project Coordinator Ken Hays explained that this project serves to replace pavement, upgrade the storm sewers, and provide pedestrian improvements needed along the Kimball / Candlewood corridor.
Hays says the city has identified this corridor as an ideal site for a trail, as west of this location the Hudson trail runs north to south as part of Manhattan’s larger Linear Trail system. The city desires that the proposed 8-feet-wide multi-use trails on both sides of the street, run along Kimball back towards the Kansas State campus to help with pedestrian access through the passageway.
The major milestone will be helping with the traffic flow at the intersection, as Hays says there are some entrances into the existing Candlewood shopping center that are a little less than ideal, as compared to the Bluemont roundabout, between Tuttle Creek Boulevard and 4th Street.
“It’s not as extensive. The Bluemont corridor, there by the redevelopment district was a complete rebuild. We had traffic volume issues there, as well as issues with the intersections there, and that was a large part of the reconstruction down at Bluemont was trying to help fix some of those issues,” Hays said. “Here we don’t have as many traffic flow issues. It’s more the pavement was deteriorating quite a bit, and then we had some significant stormwater issues here too that we’re trying to alleviate.”
The work to the street includes geometric improvements for the entrance into the Candlewood Shopping Center at Dara’s. Historically this passage has had a high accident rate, from vehicles leaving Dara’s (headed southward) and attempting to turn left (eastward) onto Kimball Avenue. With the development of the Pizza Hut drive-through in the Candlewood Shopping Center, the Public Works Department had the option to arrange with the owner of the Shopping Center to change the passageway into Dara’s to be a right-in only and add a three-quarter entrance approximately 200 feet toward the east. The new ¾ entrance takes into consideration right-in, left-in, and right-out turns, as left-out turns are not permitted. Accompanying this arrangement is the expansion of right and left-turn deceleration lanes.
Clarifying that this particular project has very little “Benefit District” involvement to it, Hays reaffirms that this stormwater and street maintenance project utilizes the Street Maintenance Tax Fund and Stormwater Fund, allocated through the water bill those in town receive.
“There is a small amount for the shopping center, with the right turn lane that we’re putting in here. But the vast majority of this one is through the general fund or stormwater and street maintenance fund,” Hays said. “There are fees that are already assessed, we are in the process of looking at stormwater rate structure, and that is partially in response to the number of stormwater projects we have identified as being needed completed around town.”
Budgeted $1,300,000 from the Special Street and Highway Fund, with supplemental funds from the Special Street Maintenance Fund, this project is set to be complete in October, and adjacent on-ramps to Seth Child will have their detours rerouted in the next two months to the south side of the road, allowing for existing concrete ditches to be placed underground.
“The primary thing we’re doing along here is, the ditch that you see behind us here, is going to be placed underground, primarily for maintenance. Open concrete ditches like that are a little harder to maintain, both for the entities that own the adjacent property, that have to mow the grass, as well as for the city,” Hays said. “Also, in this case, it happens to be a safety aspect, we have an open concrete ditch, right next to a fairly busy road. So that’s primarily what we’re doing with the ditch here.”
Hays mentions that with their stormwater master plan, the box culverts that go under Kimball were not big enough, which requires the city to install in their place boxes almost triple the size to assist with moving water on each side of Seth Child.
“So the north side of Kimball, to the south side, to help also alleviate some of the issues we’ve had to the east of here, where we actually have water that basically ponds on this side, and runs under the bridge. And we have extra flooding issues to the to the east of Seth Child,” Hays said. “With the stormwater infrastructure, we do hope to reduce the chances of flooding, especially like I said, to the east of here, but also upstream of here.”
Much of the city’s attention had been focused on the North Campus Corridor, east of this project area and extending along Kimball from College Avenue to Denison Avenue, as it presently enters the winding-up phase, with landscaping and cleaning up of construction materials. Along with that project, Hays says the city is preparing in June their bidding process for the next portion of Kimball.
“That is the portion from Denison avenue to North Manhattan, and that’s a geometric improvement project. So with that we’re hoping to help with the issues we have with that S curve that runs on Kimball there,” Hays said. “We get quite a few complaints about that and there’s some narrow lanes there with sharp curves. So that’ll be the next phase of the North Campus projects. Other than that, we have Aggieville that is continuing, and should be having work occur above ground on the parking garage starting here probably in the next two weeks. So people will start seeing the actual parking garage rising up out of the ground, as well as we’re starting to prep for placing Laramie back.”
When hearing from the community about the many ongoing projects, and the traffic delays that it imparts, Hays said that it’s a matter they’ve always known. Whether it is restrictions with the sporting events, or schools are in session, those who’ve lived in the Manhattan area for a while realize that construction projects are often on an uptick during late spring through the summer, which Hays points out can cause overlapping with projects, and competing focus during the pandemic.
“The projects that were already in the process of either being bid or under construction had either very little impact, or we actually accelerated them allowing more construction to go on. While there were less people being able to move around, with the restrictions of COVID, newer projects that hadn’t been bid yet created some concern, especially in the early months, when people were being asked to stay home, that we would have a large reduction in sales tax,” Hays said. “So there was, especially during the first half of 2020, real worry with that, and we scaled back on new projects. Now, what that’s done is meant that now we have [projects]that are ready to go, that people want us to get started on, and we had the projects that would have started now. So we were kind of compressing some of those, and having actually more projects start, now that we’re hopefully getting out of the COVID restrictions, or at least producing them.”
