Half a mil for a mile
A contract has been awarded for nearly a mile of sidewalk improvements on Park Road in the city of Chandler.
Chandler City Manager James Melson explained the project runs from Park Road Elementary School extending east. “It will be on the south side of both bridges to match the bridge walk ways,” he said.
The Oklahoma Department of Transportation awarded the bid during its Nov. 1 meeting for $477,932.90 to H&G Paving Contractors, Inc., of Muskogee. Length of the project is 0.723 mile.
“They bid it in October,” Melson noted, adding “We had 16 bidders on it.”
The city manager also pointed out, “We had to pay $15,000 for the engineering. That came out of private money. That’s done.
“We went up to ODOT in Oklahoma City and we went through the inter views of the engineering firms,” he said.
Melson said construction will start in the near future.
“We got started on this nearly three years ago. I built that bridge a couple of years ago,” Melson said.
Melson noted that on building the new bridge, the Sac and Fox Nation paid the $140,000 it cost to build it and the city paid $36,000 for the engineering.
Melson stated the District 2 commissioner back then had access to bridge beams which he donated for the bridge. “The beams came from the Crosstown Expressway in Oklahoma City when all that was redone,” the city manager further explained.
He pointed out a small group in the Chandler community began planning the sidewalk project sometime back.
Among them were Diann Herrmann and the late Dusty Martin.
Herrmann said the orig inal planning committee was comprised of herself, Martin, Matt Radcliffe, Sherri Ripley, Tim Blackwell, Elaine Imel, Mike Christy, Marshall Alsip, Ginny Fowble, Rep. Kevin Wallace, David Nickell and David Smith.
“We planned the project,” she stated, adding, “We held the town meetings and we wrote the proposal to ODOT.”
Of that group, she, Christy and Alsip were responsible for the fund raising, Herrmann noted.
The planning group sought a Safe Routes to Schools grant through ODOT called a TAP grant. “It’s a federal grant through ODOT,” Herrmann explained.
“We did the application for the ODOT grant on Nov. 30, 2018, which was almost three years ago,” she emphasized, confirming what Melson had pointed out.
The total estimated cost of the sidewalk project, including design and construction, was $704,316, Herrmann said.
“The grant we received was for $550,028,” she stated.
She said the remaining $154,288 of the cost was the responsibility of the Chandler community. “We received a $120,497.52 Avedis grant and used $19,000 from our local fund raising to make up the difference,” she stated.
Melson also explained, “This was supposed to happen 1½ years ago. But Dusty got sick, the COVID hit and the ball was kind of dropped. Then in November of 2020, ODOT told them it had to get done by the end of 2021.”
Melson emphasized with the new bridge project the city did with the Sac and Fox Nation paying the construction and the sidewalk improvements it all totals around $870,000, adding, “that’s close to a million dollars.”