(Provided, City of Sturgis)
For the past several years, the city of Sturgis has worked to complete improvement to downtown parking lots.
Sturgis City Commission has approved a task order with Fleis and Vandenbrink Engineering in the amount of $171,600 for preliminary design, final design and bidding services for the next stage of the projects.
City manager Andrew Kuk summarized the process for Sturgis City Commission at its Sept. 13 meeting.
Recently, the city received two large sources of funding to move forward with the project, Kuk said.
One is a federal earmark for $1 million, the other is $942,500 grant through the state of Michigan.
As part of the grant funding, the city hopes to finish work on several downtown parking lots, including pavement of the old Sigrist storage building lot, the public safety building lot and a new lot at the corner of North Jefferson Street and U.S. 12.
Preliminary work on several of those areas was completed to design cost estimates for each lot downtown, Kuk told city commissioners.
A task order was signed in October 2021 to design the resurfacing project for three areas, including the police/fire parking lot.
Design was completed in June 2022 and is ready for bidding, with exception of one modification.
Another order was finalized in July 2022 and included concept-level cost options for that modification and the plan for two others, to apply for submitting the grant and establish requests.
During that time frame, a “backscape visioning proposal” was done for one segment, to refine a concept design for reconstruction, Kuk told the board.
The latest order approved by the commission is for design of the remaining lots (designated as Nos. 1, 6, 7 and 12) and added portion of the storage-building lot. The plan includes work for bid phase services for the project.
The parking lot projects were budgeted for completion in fiscal year 2023-24, in several phases. The first is expected to begin in spring 2024, to coincide with ongoing downtown development and to meet grant timelines. The design stage must conclude and be ready for bid by January 2024, Kuk said.
The task order provides for a full-time project manager/lead design engineer, a part-time assistant design engineer, a part-time CAD drafter and additional time for electric designer, landscape architect and surveying.
The grant received for the parking lot project allows for design services to be reimbursed, Kuk said. If the design does not require use of the entire task-order amount, the remaining design budget will not be used.