STARKVILLE — While Main Street currently looks worse for wear, it will not be for much longer, according to Mayor Lynn Spruill.
On Monday afternoon, Spruill told the Starkville Rotary Club that the city’s Main Street redesign project will begin as early as February.
Work on the first phase should be completed within 12 to 18 months.
“In order to be competitive with other SEC towns, we need to redo Main Street and make it a place where people want to be,” Spruill said. “The project is to begin at the end of the infrastructure project, which will be at the end of February.”
Since May, contractor DNA Underground has been digging up aging water and sewer lines downtown to replace them with newer, larger lines. Spruill said this work is now completed, and the city is now in an “engineering phase,” of the above-ground Main Street redesign plan.
The plan will include expanding sidewalks, adding overhead street lighting, adding pavers to crosswalks, additional landscaping and other changes to improve the visual appeal of the city’s downtown.
Spruill said the changes will create a “much more attractive” downtown for the city, making it more event and pedestrian friendly.
“I’d like to say that we’re going to be a place that people want to be, and we’re going to be walkable from City Hall to Lee Hall,” Spruill said.
Overall, Spruill told The Dispatch she estimates the Main Street redesign project will cost about $12 million, but it has not yet gone out for bids.
Ward 2 Alderman Sandra Sistrunk told The Dispatch in a phone interview Monday that the city has $6.3 million set aside for the project, including commitments of $1 million from the Oktibbeha County Economic Development Authority, $3.25 million from the state legislature, a federal community project grant through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development worth $2 million and another $100,000 from the Greater Starkville Development Partnership.
The city is hoping for more money from the legislature in 2024, Sistrunk said, but the project can be scaled down based on the money received. Spruill said the Main Street project will be broken into phases based on when more money comes in.
“We’ll probably do it in phases,” Spruill told The Dispatch. “The first phase will be from City Hall to Jackson Street, and including the Montgomery intersection.”
The second phase, Spruill said, would include Jackson to Montgomery. She said the city is hoping for more funding from the state to close the gap.
Spruill said temporary asphalt will be put down before the redesign begins, improving current road conditions.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 44 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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