Boundary Street redevelopment construction could begin as soon as the new year
Construction on the long-anticipated Boundary Street redevelopment project should finally begin around the start of 2016, Beaufort county and city leaders said Monday.
More than a decade in the making, the now $33.6 million project is designed to create a "gateway to Beaufort" to reinvigorate new development along one of the city's main corridors.
"There will probably be no more important project in my lifetime that is going to give a brighter, better, more fiscally sustainable future," Mayor Billy Keyserling said. "Now we are on the cusp of making it happen."
The project includes redeveloping Boundary Street from west of S.C. 170 to about Ribaut Road with narrower lanes, landscaped medians, and sidewalks and bike paths. The construction includes a realigned intersection of S.C. 170 and Boundary Street and a new parallel road north of Boundary to that new intersection.
On Monday, County Council's Public Facilities Committee awarded an $18.7 million contract for the project's construction to Savannah-based contractor Preferred Materials Inc. The full council will consider the contract at its meeting next month.
That contract includes $12.6 million in federal funding specifically for the Boundary Street and S.C. 170 improvements. The remainder will be paid for with local road impact fees, special city tax district funds and money from the county's 1 percent sales tax in 2006.
The work is expected to take about two years, county engineering director Rob McFee said. Future contracts will address the roughly $4.5 million construction of the parallel road.
Since the project's original 2012 budget, costs have risen about $6.1 million -- an increase of more than 20 percent, according to county documents.
The bulk of the increase follows complications to the plan to bury utilities along the corridor. The remaining portion comes from the rising cost of materials, county financial officer Alicia Holland said.
The project has faced repeated delays over the years, from those changes, to the utility plans, to the difficulty of coordinating with local, state and federal government offices, Keyserling and county administrators said.
This year, county engineers actually had to re-bid the project, after bids received last year expired before problems with undergrounding utilities and a duct bank were resolved and approved by the Federal Highway Administration and the Department of Transportation.
Monday's approval and the expected approval by the full council on Sept. 14 puts the project back on track, said McFee and city senior projects manager David Coleman.
"This is really exciting," McFee said. "After a lot of working together, it will be great to see this thing really moving."
When a contract is approved, county and city engineers plan to create information centers online and in person so residents can track construction progress, county administrator Gary Kubic said.
The county will create a website to post updates from the site, project plans and information about necessary lane closures, Kubic said.
Coleman will host weekly office hours at City Hall for people to ask questions in person, he has said.
Once complete, the project will transform Beaufort, city and county officials say.
"Thirty-three million dollars is one heck of a lot of money, but we already are seeing interest in more than $30 million of redevelopment today from people who are talking to our planning department," Keyserling said. "We see a payback. We project, in today's dollars, about $150 million return on this $30 million investment."
"This is important for all of us."
Follow reporter Zach Murdock at twitter.com/IPBG_Zach and at facebook.com/IPBGZach.
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This story was originally published August 31, 2015 at 6:58 PM with the headline "Boundary Street redevelopment construction could begin as soon as the new year."