City awarded $1.5 million by INDOT

Friday, January 30, 2009

The city of Greencastle has received a big financial boost from the federal government in its proposed effort to extend South Street to connect with U.S. 231 on the south side.

INDOT awarded the city $1,522,000 in Local Public Agencies (LPA) Group III funding for the project. Plans for the street also include improvement of the existing section of street, which runs from Union Street on the west to Zinc Mill Road in the east. Improvements would include drainage, sidewalks and the widening and improvement of the street surface.

Mayor Sue Murray expressed her excitement at the news, saying the improvement to South Street would provide another vital east-west path on the city's south side.

"It's a nice thing to help traffic flow over by Ivy Tech and in that area. It's exciting," Murray said. "This would be a wonderful help for the people who live in the subdivision in that area."

The latest round of federal money is in addition to the $1,835,000 in federal funds the city is already planning to put toward the project. That total came from a transfer the city requested last year. The money had originally been devoted to a project on Indianapolis Road that is no longer on the docket.

This brings the total in federal money devoted to the South Street project to $3,357,000, or 80 percent of the total estimated price tag of the project. With engineering costs, which the federal money cannot count toward, total price for the plan could be $5,476,000.

Greencastle was one of four municipalities competing for $3.4 million in LPA Group III funding. Group III cities and towns have populations between 5,000 and 50,000.

City officials made their case for the federal matching funds before an award panel at INDOT's Crawfordsville office on Jan. 6. The announcement was made at a statewide public meeting in Indianapolis on Tuesday.

Work on the project is slated to commence work in the spring of 2013, but Murray and the city are hopeful it will be sooner.

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