State board grants Pine St. project $550k

The State Transportation Improvement Board has granted the city of Leavenworth $550,000 for the Pine Street reconstruction project that has been in the works for years. TIB provides small city arterial funding, which the city has applied for in the past. 

The Commercial Street, 3rd to 8th, project was funded in part by TIB. 

“This our second attempt at trying to get a portion of Pine Street paid for through TIB’s small city arterial grant program. We were successful. Actually it turns out we were rated near the top project in the small cities arterial group. We must have hit quite a few of the points,” said Leavenworth City Administrator Joel Walinski. The first time the city applied for funding, Walinski things they were not far enough along for them to fund the project. He said the TIB likes projects that are ready to go. At that point, the city did not have all their funding in place. 

As well, Walinski said funders like to be the last one to fill the final gap. 

“Those two things helped us this time. Also, because we had modified the program to address the multi-use trail and the sidewalks, traffic calming,” Walinski said. “I think those added points to us because basically what I’ve seen over the years, the granting funders like to see what they call a complete-streets-approach, where you have sidewalks, multi-use paths, bicycle and pedestrian. I think those things worked in our favor in this design and grant.”

The Pine Street project, phase one, costs $2,090,700. The phase one reconstruction is from Ski Hill Drive to Titus Rd. Phase two is from Titus to Chumstick. There is currently no timeline for the phase two project. 

“We are starting to think about now that we have the funding in place. We’re pushing on the design for phase one. It takes three to four years to get the whole financing package in place. That would push us out to 2022,” Walinski said. 

When Walinski came to Leavenworth in 2010, Pine Street was one of the top rate projects in the city. Since then, other top projects have been knocked off, but still Pine Street remains. 

Currently, there is a cultural resource study being done in the area. After that will be right-of-way certification. Engineers draw up the right-of-way and submit it to the Washington Department of Transportation, indicating the right-of-way footprint in the construction area. 

“We’ve had lots of conversations about the right-of-way in the past, on the school property, Pinegrass property and even some ongoing discussion on the other side of the street. We have to get that all secured and lined up,” he said. 

The design work is about 60 percent complete. There are a couple of items to keep track of, the storm drains and what those look like. That was input from the recent Pine Street open house. 

They are also considering pedestrian lighting, which is important because this is an area where kids will be walking to and from school. 

“We’ve done some traffic studies there in terms of speed. We know, even with the road in the condition it’s in, people are going very fast on that road. We need to come up with some traffic calming for that road. There are some different ideas for that. We need to address it,” Walinski said. 

Storm drains, lighting and traffic calming are the top three things talked about, in terms of design. Walinski said they will need to get back to people. 

“Another thing from the open house that people wanted to know, how does the traffic patterns at Alpine Lakes Elementary intersect with Pine Street itself?,” he said. “We’ve asked the school district to provide some information on their pick up zones, drop off zones, walkway zones. All those types of things that use Pine and Titus. How do the buses approach? That will have some bearing on how we design Pine Street at that end.”

Initially, it was hoped construction would begin in 2018, but realistically, it is looking more like 2019. 

“We’ll probably have our plan sets ready and talking to the public in 2018 on what the final plans look like. I think the sequencing on bidding will get us to a good spot in the year to get some good numbers,” Walinski said. 

Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.