Iowa City’s Court Street is set to receive a nearly $10 million facelift starting in early 2025. The project would remove and replace water and sewer utilities, streets and sidewalk pavement, traffic signal systems, and other work, according to city documents.
This street connects the east side of the city to downtown. Ethan Yoder, a civil engineer for the city, told the Iowa City City Council that the portion of Court Street that will be worked on runs from Muscatine Avenue to South First Avenue.
Project goals include improving deteriorating streets, sidewalks, and public utilities as well as accessibility improvements to intersections, Yoder said.
At the Iowa City City Council’s Nov. 19 meeting, the city council approved a project manual and estimated cost of $9.6 million for the project, which marks the beginning of officially getting the project off the ground. The city will now solicit bids for companies to do the work and select a construction company in January, documents state.
Once a contractor is selected, construction is set to begin in February 2025 and last until the fall of 2027, according to city documents.
The construction process will go through a few different stages, Mike Fahrer, a civil engineer at the construction company Foth, said at the meeting. Throughout the project, through traffic will not be able to use the road, but there will be detours available at every step, he said.
In 2025, utility improvements for storm sewers and water mains from Muscatine Avenue to South First Avenue will be made along with street reconstruction from Muscatine Avenue to Wales Street, Fahrer said. Next, in 2026, the streets from Wales Street to Second Avenue will be reconstructed, he said.
In the final year of construction in 2027, the streets from Second Avenue to South First Avenue will be rebuilt, Fahrer said. This portion will take place mainly during the summer to limit its impacts on nearby City High School since the road will be fully closed in that area, he said.
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At the city council meeting, Councilor Shawn Harmsen said he is excited to see this project begin, as it was originally supposed to take place sooner. The Court Street project was slated to begin right after Rochester Avenue’s reconstruction, but that project was delayed by a few years and was recently completed.
To be sure construction stays on schedule and is not delayed like the Rochester Avenue project, Yoder said there are incentives and disincentives for the timeliness of the project. If the company finishes the project early, it will be paid more. If the project lags, there will be financial penalties, he said.
Councilor Megan Alter said she was curious about how many trees may have to be cut down for the project. Fahrer said there are around 40 trees that will have to be removed, with around seven trees being on city property instead of private property.
Some of these trees were not in great shape, so there would be no major issues with removing them, Fahrer said. For the “critical” trees that were larger and would create issues if removed, the city has done what they can to preserve them, he said.
Harmsen said the expanded buffer between the road and sidewalks is a good feature to have in a location near a school.
“I am happy to see the extended parkway there because [there are] so many kids walking to school, and there’s a ton of our newest drivers in the community also on that same roadway,” Harmsen said. “And I think having a little extra space between those two factors — I like that.”