A major facelift is coming for the Fifth Street North corridor, thanks to a $1.3 million Transportation Alternatives Program grant from the Mississippi Department of Transportation.
The grant, which the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors applied for on the city of Columbus’ behalf, will make a stretch of Fifth Street adjacent to downtown more pedestrian-friendly.
City Engineer Kevin Stafford said the project will look at the area between Fifth Avenue North and Ninth Avenue North. Fifth Avenue is the street running along the north side of the Magnolia Bowl, and Ninth Avenue is the last cross-street before the Highway 82 East on-ramp.
The grant’s primary purpose is to make the area more friendly for pedestrians and bicycle riders. As it stands there are no pedestrian or bike lanes, and people speed through the area because Fifth Street is so wide, Stafford said.
The project will add sidewalks, as well as landscaped islands in the middle of the road.
The TAP grant money may only be used for construction, not design and engineering, Stafford said. The city will put up $400,000 in internet use tax funds as a match to cover those expenses.
The city was originally awarded the grant back in February 2022, but MDOT took it back because the city’s Fiscal Year 2020 audit was not finished by the federal deadline. Last summer the city gave it another go, this time asking the board of supervisors to apply for the grant on its behalf.
The board of supervisors unanimously approved activating the grant at its Monday meeting, and the council voted to accept it during Tuesday’s council meeting. The county will act as a pass-through for the city, which will perform all the work.
The cooperation is not unprecedented, Stafford said. The city and county similarly worked together to get TAP funding back when the pedestrian bridge at the Riverwalk was being renovated.
“Kind of the unwritten rule then was that you can’t have two of these grants going at the same time,” Stafford said. “The other project the city wanted to do was to connect the soccer complex and the Riverwalk, so the thinking was one end is the county’s soccer complex and one end was the city’s Riverwalk, so maybe the county will apply.”
The timing couldn’t be better, said Mayor Keith Gaskin.
“It’s great timing for the development that’s been planned for that part of the city,” Gaskin said during his Wednesday morning press conference. “It will really be a major improvement.”
The area affected by the grant is one of the primary gateways into the Columbus Redevelopment Authority’s Burns Bottom project, which is just west of the Fifth Street/Fifth Avenue intersection.
Board of Supervisors President Trip Hairston said the county was glad to help.
“It was a unanimous vote,” Hairston told The Dispatch Wednesday afternoon. “There wasn’t anybody around that table who wasn’t happy to do it.”
Stafford estimated design work will take about nine months.
Paving town halls planned
Gaskin, also during Wednesday’s press conference, announced the city is planning two town hall meetings to get public input on street paving.
The city still has about $400,000 left over from $6.5 million in paving bonds issued in 2019 that can be put toward more work, and Chief Financial Officer James Brigham estimated the city will receive about $2 million in internet use tax revenue this year.
Use tax funding may only be used for road and bridge projects.
The exact amount of money that will be dedicated to the next round of paving hasn’t been determined, Gaskin said, nor has a list of streets to be paved. The city is looking to the public for some help with that decision.
“We want people to come and complain,” Gaskin said. “We want them to bring pictures. We will have a list of streets we think are high priority, and they can review the list and ask how we determine that.”
Stafford said the city maintains a list of roads that need attention, but the list comes to a total of about $4.6 million.
“We’ve got a list of deferred streets that we see as streets in need,” he said. “There’s not one ward that doesn’t have needs. At a low end, most of them are around $600,000 in needs, with some as high as $1 million. … Through the town halls we’ll get some feedback on that list.”
Some of the roads people are most concerned about are private, he said.
“The road behind Chick-fil-A gets brought up a lot,” Stafford said. “The worst portion of that road is a private road. We are trying to work with the owners to get that done.”
Some areas of concern are also easy fixes, he said.
“Sometimes people bring up concerns and we go out and look at it and Public Works can go out and fix it,” he said.
Stafford said the city averages about $1 million a year in paving expenditures historically.
“Since 2001 (the city’s) spent about $21.3 million in paving,” he said.
The dates and times for the town halls have not been set, Gaskin said.
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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