Streets and Sidewalks Committee authorizes bid for Adams Street roundabout after $332,000 estimate increase

The Streets and Sidewalks Committee voted unanimously July 28 to authorize staff to seek bids for the Adams Street–Riverside Drive–Staunton Road roundabout project after engineers produced an estimate $332,000 higher than the project budget.

The vote follows a staff request to proceed to bidding. “We are asking for authorization to go out to bid,” Mr. Titterington, a city staff member, told the committee.

The project matters because it will alter traffic near the junior high and high school, overlap parts of downtown event planning and the city’s Strawberry Festival, and does not include planned bicycle-path upgrades that some council members asked about.

The committee-approved scope calls for a single-lane roundabout, replacement of concrete gutters, a mountable curb, storm pipe repairs, new street lighting and relocation of a water line. Staff said an additional right-turn lane would be reintroduced after the right-turn drop into the junior high. The city will keep the intersection open during construction, with phasing that closes only the side where work is active.

Councilman Jeffrey Schilling pressed staff on timing and budget, saying the new estimate left the project “already, like, 20% over budget” and that the work would stretch from a planned December start through about six months of construction. Schilling suggested postponing to summer 2026 to confine work to school vacation; staff replied that other capital projects and the city’s project-management workload make that timing impractical. “We have accommodated spreading out our project management and our capital improvement plan rather than pushing everything to the summer of next year,” a city staff member said in response.

Staff told the committee the city had authorized a professional services agreement with American StructurePoint in September and that the firm has prepared detailed drawings ready for bid. Staff cited staffing vacancies, coordination with utilities and more detailed design work as reasons the project missed an earlier target to complete during the current summer.

The schedule staff described anticipates bidding and awarding contracts later this year, beginning construction at the end of 2025 and aiming for an approximately six-month window, weather permitting. Staff also said they were not requesting emergency legislation.

Council members asked whether the roundabout work would include widening or a reconstructed off-street, multiuse trail for the southbound bike lane in front of the schools; staff said the bike-lane segment falls outside the current project limits and would not be part of this contract.

The committee’s authorization is a direction to proceed to advertise the project for bids and does not itself appropriate funds. Staff indicated the project will be paid from multiple funds listed in the project memo; the memo included a corrected funding column and showed how portions of the work would be allocated among those funds.

Next steps are formal bid solicitation and contractor selection. Staff said they will coordinate traffic-phasing plans with the schools, Metropolitan Housing and other stakeholders to limit disruption during construction.