(Spirit Lake)– The boulevards along Hill Avenue in Spirit Lake will be getting a facelift. The city council Tuesday evening awarded a bid for the work to be done this summer. City Administrator Greg Owens says they’ll have an entirely different look…
“The ends that are rounded now will become more of a gradual slope down to merge with the street to avoid problems with curbs being knocked off by snowplows, all those kinds of things. The ends of the boulevard, if anybody’s paid attention the last 10 years, we’ve discovered through trial and error, cannot support plant growth. And so the ends, the semi-circular area, will be filled with concrete and stamped to give the appearance of brick, but we’re not putting brick in there and buying more maintenance. The second part of all this, which isn’t really part of this project, the city also independently made the decision last year because of the age of all of the plantings that have been there since the Hill Avenue project 26, 27 years ago, all of the plantings have been removed. So with the exception of the ends that will be concrete, anything else where you see space that was taken out, we’ll be doing some consultation and some design work and getting some street landscape appropriate new plants in there.”
The contract on the approximately $500,000 project was awarded to Diamond Concrete of Spirit Lake.
Owens says work on the north end of Hill Avenue could start as early as the weather allows this spring. Any work on the south end, near the schools, can’t start until after school is out for the summer. The entire project is slated for completion this coming August 1st.
