Riverside staff are looking to fund improvements to the village’s downtown streetscape by applying for another round of state grant funding.
At the village board’s Aug. 15 meeting, trustees unanimously approved applying for about $2.3 million in grant funding from the Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program, which would cover 80% of the cost to renovate downtown sections of East Quincy Street, Riverside Road, East Avenue and Forest Avenue. They passed the resolution as part of the meeting’s consent agenda, meaning they did not consider or discuss it individually.
The estimated total cost for the improvements is about $2.7 million. If Riverside receives the grants, it would have to fund the remaining 20% of project costs, about $539,000, on its own.
Riverside aims to improve the four streets as two projects. The first project would see 700 feet of East Quincy Street improved on both sides with decorative brick paver sidewalks and about 190 feet of Riverside Road redone on the east side with brick pavers, raised planting beds and trees. Each street’s set of improvements starts where the two roads meet downtown. Three new high-visibility crosswalks would be installed in the area, one to cross East Quincy Street and two near where Riverside Road meets Burling Road.
Riverside has applied for ITEP grant funding to renovate these stretches of East Quincy Street and Riverside Road every other year since 2016, which is as often as it can, but the village has yet to receive enough money to complete the project. In 2018, Riverside received $10,000 in ITEP funding for preliminary design work on the facelift. The village did not receive grants in other years.
The second project would bring decorative brick pavers to the sidewalk on the south side of Forest Avenue, from the alley west of 39 Forest Ave. to the intersection with East Avenue, and to the sidewalk on the west side of East Avenue, from the intersection down to where the parking spots end. On East Avenue, the new sidewalk will include a decorative “ribbon” of pavers that winds south from the north crosswalk to Centennial Park. Two new seat walls would abut existing green space on the sidewalk where the two streets meet. New stop signs would also go in immediately before the crosswalks at the south end of East Avenue and on Pine Avenue where East Avenue meets it.
This is the first time Riverside has applied for an ITEP grant to revamp East and Forest avenues. Last September, when the village board approved including the extra work in the village’s application, Assistant Village Manager Ashley Monroe told trustees the increased scope of the renovations could heighten Riverside’s chances of receiving funding.
According to the resolution that trustees approved Thursday, the work on East Quincy Street and Riverside Road would bear the lion’s share of the overall $2.7 million price tag. The estimated total cost for that project is about $1.8 million — nearly twice the amount the village said the work would cost the last time it applied. The estimate for the work on East and Forest avenues comes to about $893,000.
In 2022, Riverside estimated the total for the work on East Quincy Street and Riverside Road to be about $924,000. In 2020, it expected the project to cost about $803,000. In an email to the Landmark, Monroe said there were several reasons for the price hike this year, including that the prices of construction materials have risen due to inflation.
“Some of the bigger increases were what is required for drainage system adjustments with the installation of the [curb] bump-outs. We also revised the plans to include relocation of more streetlamps than initially projected (three to 11) with no changes in overall lighting,” she said. “Also of note … is the addition of a gateway element (signage or other feature) at $30,000 and the pavers initially proposed at approximately $145,000 have been replaced with a majority of exposed aggregate concrete paving at $117,000, per design revisions based on public feedback.”
Monroe also said Riverside’s engineers tend to overestimate costs in future phases of work to give the village flexibility. As Riverside is only in the first engineering phase of the East Quincy Street and Riverside Road renovations, the actual cost of the project may come in lower than projected as work continues.
“Any unused funds could be reallocated to construction if there are costs that increase,” she said.
According to the Active Transportation Alliance, Illinois has $140 million up for grabs through ITEP grants this year, with each project eligible for up to $3 million. Awards are expected to be announced next spring. ITEP grants, which come from a mix of federal and state sources, are reimbursable and require proof of expenditure before Illinois disburses them, meaning Riverside will have to pay upfront for the renovations.
Riverside has had its eye on improving its downtown streetscape since 2016, when it used ITEP funds to offset a majority of the cost to redo the streetscape along East Burlington Street and Longcommon Road.
