City Council Work Session - West Main Streetscape, 4-6PM   9/30/2020

Mr. Blair, I'm going to resend Council's invitations just to make sure that everyone has them handy.

Thank you for resending it, Brian.

I was actually clicking on it when you sent it.

I know the feeling.

Brian, I see Marty Sillman in the attendees.

Could we make him a panelist as well?

Promotions the right word.

Sounds too positive.

I promoted myself to a different closet than I was in earlier with Mr. Blair, where I didn't get good signal.

Dodging these kids is getting to be difficult.

They're everywhere.

Well, if there's any sort of bumping and banging, they're replacing my roof right now.

So yeah.

There were some materials that were emailed to us that I'm trying to track down.

Does that have the PowerPoint or whatever it was?

And I'll be sharing my screen, so we'll be going through it.

I'm happy to do that.

All right, good.

What is it?

Hi, everyone.

How are you all doing?

I called this meeting to order.

Couldn't figure out whether it was afternoon or evening.

Ms.

Thomas, would you do roll call, please?

Ms.

Walker?

Here.

Ms.

Magill?

Here.

Thank you, Mayor Walker, councilors.

As you know, the purpose of today's work session is to discuss the West Main Streetscape Project.

In your Brady Bunch panel assembly here, you'll see a number of folks from different departments that are the subject matter experts that

Hopefully, I mean, we can give you a comprehensive view of this project and where it stands now.

We've got representatives from Utilities, Budget, Public Works, as well as NDS.

I will turn the meeting over to

Jeanette Janicek.

She's going to lead us through a PowerPoint and discussion through those slides.

I would say there may be some questions I would want to ask sort of on the fly, but would tend to hold less.

If it's something that needs to get clarified right away, I would ask it at the time.

Otherwise, I'd probably hold it.

OK.

All right.

All right, good afternoon, everyone.

Let me pull up the PowerPoint slide and share that.

Start at the beginning.

Can everyone see my screen?

Excellent.

So I've broken this out into several different sections.

One is project history.

Another is funding and status.

And that is broken out into each phase.

Then we're talking about next steps.

Have a moment for public comment and then have direction forward and wrap up.

So the overall objective of this presentation is to provide a very high level overview to

update individuals on the status, introduce maybe the project to some new counselors, though I'm sure you know something of it, but we're going to get into a little bit more detail.

Just talking about the current status, the associated costs, we're not really going into design details for this one, or we weren't intending to.

And we're really seeking direction from you all as to what kind of support City Council has for this project, what type of scope,

the value engineering and budget input, as well as the final disposition of the statue, Sacagawea Lewis and Clark.

So the first section is project history.

This was not just a streetscape project.

This was an overall look of West Main.

So there were different components, whether it's the parking study or a review of the zoning that took place in 2003, we started to see the impact.

and that was revisited in 2016, separating the two zoning on either side of the bridge.

We are currently, we developed a schematic design plan which is basically a concept and we've advanced that through 60% design plans.

So that's currently where we are.

Through the process, we had different modes of public involvement

There was a steering committee established.

There were seven meetings.

Some of the individuals served in multiple capacities.

So you've had a place design task force, but they also might be on the BPAC or a neighborhood representative.

So this isn't intended to be all inclusive, but we did also meet with place.

BAR has reviewed the plans.

UVA has been updated several times.

We've met with the Midtown Business Association.

Most recently, there was a coordination with Charlene Green and Jeff Warner regarding the historic interpretation and individuals interested in that from the community.

There were also stakeholder group meetings where we grouped people by interest or by relationship, so independent foundations and landholders and developers, businesses and restaurants, community groups.

That was over a two-day period.

We've had four pretty large meetings.

These are older.

We are planning to continue with our public involvement depending on our direction forward.

So these are the four general public meetings.

And then we've also been meeting with city council and updating you.

As of March 21st, 2016, we disbanded the steering committee and city council is now serving as the steering committee.

I'm just curious, was the reason that council

disbanded the steering committee and took it over as themselves now being the steering committee.

Was there some particular reason for that?

I don't think so.

And then the most recent kind of

Time frame, I know that a couple of times things have been put in front of me through 221s or some things to council.

What we say is kind of what's the current status aside from us, like obviously keeping moving forward.

Like what has kind of been like the gap that we're seeing in these timelines of when it was really, really active, a lot of movement going on.

And now there's been kind of a lull, obviously there's less six months is a very different story, but even just thinking about like 2019 and I'm just trying to figure out that bridge.

Sure, we changed project management.

So this was moved over to the transportation division.

And we have been working with the consultants in adapting what was developed as a local project into now a state funded project.

So revisiting the contract, making sure that all the requirements are met, and then trying to get direction to move forward.

So you'll see some of these steps of if I can get direction on this, we can move forward like the environmental document.

things of that nature.

Okay, all right, moving forward to funding status.

So local funds have been used to develop the master plan, the 30% and the 60%.

It was at this point, we started looking for outside funding.

So we broke out the corridor into four phases.

First one is ridge to six, then phase two is six to eight,

Phase three is eighth to Roosevelt Brown, and then four is Roosevelt Brown to Jefferson Park Avenue to complete the corridor.

Each of these phases can be done independently.

That's a requirement that there's logical termini, that they serve a transportation use, that they do not require you to complete another phase and don't preclude you from doing something else.

So we could do one,

or two or none or what have you of these phases.

I've broken them out into different the funding for each phase.

And then in the last slide, it's all rolled up together so we can take a look at the overall project.

So the first phase of developing this project from a local project to a state and federal is reviewing the overall estimate.

During the planning phase, there was a lot of discussion about the construction estimate and the construction estimate being 31 million.

And when we started taking it over from the transportation point of view, we don't talk about construction estimate.

We talk about from beginning to end, this is how much it's going to cost the city to complete the project.

Design, right-of-way, construction inspection, and construction, VDOT oversight, everything that's included.

So you're going to see a change in these numbers from the 31 million construction estimate, which is still accurate, to what the whole project, Kidd and Caboodle, is going to cost you.

So for phase one, we have the PE of 1.7 that is designed to finalize everything, which is really the big crux of making sure the construction documents are accurate.

that we finalize coordination with all the internal stakeholders, making sure we're meeting current requirements and making sure in particular we're meeting state requirements.

We're also having the consultants look from a federal standpoint.

We do not want to do phase one and phase two, which are both just state funded to the point where

In Phase 3, if we get federal funding thrown on the project, we're not able to continue with, say, the light feature, or we're going to have to change tactics with something.

We want to make sure that it's consistent, regardless of its state or federal funding.

We have right-of-way.

A lot of the right-of-way on this corridor is temporary construction easements.

The other is permanent easements for the utility undergrounding.

We're not looking to acquire any parcels, displace any businesses, anything of that nature.

I did break out the franchisee private utility relocation.

That's 4.3 for this phase.

The reason why I did that was that has to be paid for out of local dollars.

It cannot be paid for out of transportation dollars.

It's considered a betterment.

And VDOT is concerned about moving vehicles or people.

They're not concerned about

undergrounding utilities unless it's a requirement due to space or some other conflict.

Construction is 9.8, bringing the total of this phase to 16.7.

There is contingency in here, particularly construction contingency of 20%.

Right away, there's an additional contingency for that.

So the funding that we have allocated for this phase is 3.3 from revenue sharing state

and local is 13.4.

So this is a funded phase.

Phase two, 1.2 for PE.

We have right of way acquisition and then the franchisee utility relocation of 4.6 million, bringing the right of way cost to 5 million.

Construction of 7.3 with a total of 13.5.

Again, there's contingency on here, there's escalation on here, negotiation room on here.

So the funding for this so far has been identified 2 million in revenue sharing, 2 million in smart scale, and then 7.1 in local.

We currently have 2.4 that's unidentified.

We're gonna talk a little bit about the value engineering phase and how we can get these numbers down possibly, changing the scope.

and we're also gonna talk about maybe contingency.

Right now it's a little high.

Can I ask one quick question just to clarify?

Sure.

When we're talking local, what does that mean?

Does that mean our capital improvements, our CIP budget?

The CIP budget has funded this project, yes.

or that we're, I mean, it's not necessarily funded yet.

It's been put into the CIP and it's in SAP, but budget would have to let you know whether the bond has been released or not.

That I don't get involved in.

We've not sold any bonds for West Main Street.

And not all of it is in the CIP.

Some of it has been approved.

Yeah, we have about $18.2 million that have been approved in terms of approved CIPs to sell bonds for for this project.

And I just went ahead and took the projected and put that in as funded.

if that helps explain things a little better.

So moving on to Phase 3.

Phase 3 has been submitted for a SmartScale application in this latest round.

We will hear about the outcome of that in early 2021, and we

would expect funding to be available at the latest July 1st, 2025 with the possibility of escalating if we actually got funded and we can move these phases along faster.

These numbers have been inflated given how far out we're expecting the project to be.

So PE has a 15% contingency, right away has a 20%, construction has a 25%,

and then VDOT includes its own escalation factor so that all the applications are evaluated the same.

So that grew the budget from like a $6.8 million budget to a 10.3 or 10.4.

You'll notice that there is no undergrounding of private utilities.

There is none expected for this phase of the project.

The vast majority, almost 10 million of it is in phase one and phase two.

Phase four, as you will see, there's just a tiny bit left to complete this corridor.

So we have smart scale at 10.3.

We're not sure if it's going to be state or federal.

VDOT did us a favor because we had so much state money on this project of not federalizing it for the small amount of smart scale that we got on phase two.

So we're not sure if that's gonna hold.

It's probably going to be federal.

Phase four,

We're looking at 1.4 for PE.

The undergrounding is 1.3 with the right-of-way cost of 1.8.

Construction is 5.8 for a total of 9 million.

This is unidentified.

There is contingency.

But there is no escalation because I'm not quite sure when we would expect to start construction.

Can I ask one quick question?

As you're talking about these contingency numbers, as we've had conversations with schools about just cost of construction in this current world, what factor will that play in?

Before COVID, we were seeing

a rapid increase in pricing.

And that had to do with the amount of funding that was being released on transportation projects.

So the number of projects that are out there and then the relatively low or stable number of contractors.

So we were seeing escalation.

As of now, we don't quite know what we're going to see in the future.

Belmont is going to be a good bellwether kind of determination.

We always,

build in contingency or try to to avoid coming back and asking you all for more money.

So we're trying to be reasonable.

We're not trying to overblow the budget and scare everyone.

If there is contingency left over, we always return that to, of course, you all.

The objective is to not spend every dime that we get.

So for the interchange, we're able to return money for Hillsdale.

We're able to return money.

Hopefully we'll get the same result with Belmont.

No, that is going to come up in the next slide.

Well, no, sorry, two slides from now.

So the next slide shows phase one through four.

So you get the overall concept of what the project's, the whole corridor is going to cost you.

So design is 5.2.

Right-of-way is 12.5.

It's relatively low, 2.4, because again, it's just temporary construction easements to blend in the project with the neighboring parcels.

But the 10.2, that's that private undergrounding.

That's kind of hefty.

And then the construction is still 31.5 million.

So that does bring a grand total of 49.3.

We have a total of 5.3 in revenue sharing, 2 million in smart scale, local of 20.5.

As Chrissy pointed out, we're still expecting another 4 million in the next fiscal year.

So the funding is 27.8.

We have applied for the 10.3 revenue sharing or sorry, smart scale application for phase three, which leaves an unfunded amount of 11 million.

I did not include in these figures all the effort to date that was simply local money that got us to this point.

And that's 3.159.

That's how much has been spent to develop the plan up to 60%.

And then also included in this is utility design.

We've spent $226,000.

Well, we are pretty competitive based on we're an urban

Location.

So we can get a lot of points on our pedestrian improvements.

I was able to max out the amount of square footage of development that we're expecting adjacent to this corridor, which is over a million square feet.

So that's pretty good.

The concern I have is the cost.

The district was expecting 20 million for the whole district of Culpeper.

We're asking 10.3.

right off the top.

So it has a lot of benefits and we'll have to see how that weighs out against what other projects, other localities have submitted, which changes every year and it's hard to kind of anticipate.

Another way of making this more competitive is buying down the cost of the project.

So the cheaper we can make the project, the more likely the benefit will give us a good score.

And one of the ways to do that is with leveraging UVA's commitment.

So we had a previous commitment from UVA in March 2018 for $5 million in support of projects adjacent to the grounds.

I don't believe that we ask for any money for Brandon Avenue, which allows the $5 million left over.

and the letter states that it will remain available for West Main Street, streetscape project.

Assuming that this would be more applicable to phase three or phase four, which is much closer to grounds.

So we're going to get into future maintenance.

All of these improvements are wonderful.

They're going to give us a clean slate on a lot of different areas such as paving, stormwater, lighting, the whole bit.

but there is a cost to maintaining this increased infrastructure.

So back in 2017, we had Public Works do a little cost estimate.

They came up with a $57,000 annual cost to maintain West Main as it is now.

With the new design, we're looking at basically 200,000.

We're no longer doing the raised crosswalk, so you can eliminate that.

A lot of this has to do with it appears the historic signage interpretation, which we've kind of dialed back, but don't expect that number to go down drastically.

So that's from the public works perspective.

From the parks perspective is they maintain the downtown mall and the corner on a much higher level than they do other places throughout the city or for the streets.

They stop

on West Main or University Avenue at that point at the railroad bridge, 14th Street.

What they'd be looking to do is increase if we proceed with West Main of making this basically an extension of the downtown mall or the corner.

So that increases the trash removal, the blowing, the sweeping, the whole bit.

So they were looking at requesting 3.5

additional full time employees, one supervisor, two and a half regular employee.

Your little box is covering my numbers now.

Let me see if I can.

So in labor cost and minor materials, you're looking at one hundred and sixty seven thousand.

This would not happen right away.

This is for the whole corridor.

So obviously when one quarter finishes, that portion then starts adding to this.

With our construction of streetscape projects and other roadway improvements, we typically add a two year maintenance period as well.

So there would be no watering, pruning, mulching, tree replacement, weeding, or any of that for two years that's paid for under our contract.

But as these get added, Parks was also looking at other capital expenses.

So they feel that after phase one,

They would need a crew vehicle and small engine equipment for roughly 82,000.

And after phase two, they were looking to add the water truck and additional sweeper for another 150,000.

If the project does not move forward, there is concern about the health of about 30% of the trees that are out there.

So that would need to be replaced in phases or all in one go.

But that's a possibility.

And speaking of the future, if West Main does not move forward as we've scoped or as we intended, we are looking at upcoming maintenance needs that need to occur now.

So we have a full signal replacement at Ridge, McIntyre Road and South Street that was installed in 1960.

You're typically expecting 30 years on a traffic signal.

So we're on borrowed time with that one.

The next one that would be coming up would be 10th and Roosevelt Brown Boulevard if we, again, replaced it at the expected 30-year mark or recommended 30-year mark.

So that would be in 2031 that the city would be looking to do that.

We've also reviewed the pedestrian actuation.

It's the countdown at the signals.

We're missing them or they don't currently meet today's standards.

at the four signals listed below.

We're also, we've been deferring paving West Main.

We've seen a lot of development, no point in replacing it now.

And we were expecting West Main to happen.

So it was last paved in 1996.

It's definitely needs to be repaved and striped.

Then you have the general maintenance that you expect with the lighting and the sidewalk and the signage.

And in addition, when we repave,

We will need to replace or install the missing curb ramps that you see listed on the slide, as well as there are some curb ramps that we're not aware of, we haven't counted them yet, that will need to be upgraded to meet today's ADA standard.

That's a requirement.

That sheet just kind of reflects it, regardless if we don't

Due to the age of the infrastructure out there, yes, there will need to be work done on West Main.

We do not.

We do not.

We're talking

300,000 at least for that signal at Ridge, McIntyre and South.

That's a little unusual.

Not sure about the paving and the striping.

It adds up and we could certainly get you that figure.

So speaking of something that has to happen, regardless of whether the streetscape happens or not, is the water and gas line replacement.

We're at the end of our useful life for the water line.

We also need to increase capacity for all the things that are being built on West Main.

So we're looking at 3,700 linear feet of 10 inch water line that will need to be installed.

And it's being upsized to 12 inch.

The gas line that's 10 inches out there is also at the end of its useful life.

Or if you're digging up the water line, you might as well dig up the gas because it would be far behind.

That was installed in 1930.

looking at 5000 linear feet of low pressure 10 inch gas line that's going to be replaced with a high pressure four inch gas line.

There's also an additional 4710 linear feet of polyethylene gas line and associated services that are also going to need to be replaced.

This design is being funded and coordinated with the West Main streetscape project, but it needs to occur before the streetscape project.

No, only the design is being paid for out of West Main.

DPU or Department of Public Utilities has

that costs in their CIP request for construction.

Does that gas line service the university or is it completely separate from the university?

Because I know they have a plan.

I believe to phase out their use of fossil fuels by 2030.

I'm not sure if it's servicing the university.

Yeah, this gas line runs up and it actually turns and runs to the Beta Bridge on Rugby Road.

So it really services the

Okay, so looking at an aggressive schedule, the soonest we could get things going would be the water and gas line design at the end or sorry, mid 2021 with construction and bidding ending mid 2022.

That gives us time to design not only the rest of the streetscape, but also the undergrounding of the private utilities and completing the right of way acquisition for both of those activities.

And that would allow construction of undergrounding to start at the end of 2022 and ending at 2023.

And then the streetscape project itself would be for a year.

We're only looking at phase one and phase two, hopefully.

and that would be through 2024.

So next steps is the value engineering study.

We would be looking at the whole corridor.

This is a state requirement.

It's also a federal requirement once you get to a certain amount.

We look at this as an opportunity to improve the project quality.

We might, we get fresh set of eyes on how to

basically tackle the situation, maybe more cost effective alternatives, maybe revising our view of the project, looking at shortening the construction schedule, just any efficiency that we could possibly come up with and making sure that it's constructible.

It's another, again, set of eyes.

We always consider the project's purpose and need when evaluating these alternatives, the previous public input,

other city departments' responses, public commitments to other boards.

And then if we're gonna change something, we're probably gonna have to redesign it and incur those costs as well.

So an example that I gave was for Belmont Bridge.

We completed one, it's roughly 40,000 to do a value engineering study of this magnitude.

2.7 million in savings was identified.

One million of it was actually instituted.

There were things that were a big no-go about removing the pedestrian tunnel at Grave Street, narrow the bridge, which would not allow us to do our MOT, so we would have to detour traffic off the bridge, which we didn't think was possible.

But we were able to relook at the knuckle and how the mezzanine wall was constructed and

certain design details that no one really actually know and gets us the same quality product we were looking to get.

And the statue relocation.

I know we've come before you a few times.

May 6th, it was reaffirmed that the Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea Memorial could be shifted slightly as approved in the schematic design plan.

So that was reaffirmed

but then you also had a work session on November 15th, 2019 requesting the eventual removal of this statue.

So what I was looking for tonight was if we are proceeding with the project, should the statue be relocated and it'll cost roughly 125,000 that we've assumed to relocate a statue that we don't want with the West Main project or

Would the city be planning to move and maybe store the statue before West Main happens?

This will impact how the coordination with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources takes place, and I need to know what the eventual direction is because we don't want to relocate something with state funds, only then to take local dollars and completely remove it.

So that is a question I have for you all.

Next steps if the project proceeds forward would be obviously updating the project website with our current activities and future public involvement.

We would like to coordinate phase one with phase two if it moves forward.

This gives us a lot of efficiencies, less disruption to the corridor.

We see a lot of benefits with that.

We'd also be finalizing the consultant contract to allow us to update the website and coordinate phase one and phase two.

And our next public meeting would be the design public hearing.

So hopefully we could hold the value engineering study, get your input as to how aggressive that should be, how much you want to be included in that process, if there's a dollar value we're shooting for, and then we could

report back to the public what those design changes would be at that public hearing.

So that was the end of my presentation.

I have a comment.

This has always been an expensive project.

I would like to know, once I hear the feedback from the public and other councilors, what the cost would be for those other items that have to get done.

if this were delayed in any way.

And then in terms of the statue, I think the intention on that has been to move it as quickly as possible.

I thought it was already decided that the statue was being moved.

OK, I think staff's been a little concerned that there is that a plan needs to be developed before the statue will be relocated and

So the resolution that was passed back in November

simply directs that the staff present the council with a plan for the removal of the statue from West Main Street.

I think there's a question as to where the money will come from in the CIP to move the statue.

I think it also that creating a plan of where that will eventually be housed appears to be a long process.

I think we know we want to get rid of it.

So did we ask for, and so this is what I thought would be happening, whether we were asking for submissions or what were our other options to get rid of it.

I'm not sure if those options are yet being explored as to where the statue is going.

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be doing that.

I could just put it in my backyard at this point.

I don't care.

And then the second one is the, what do you call it?

What was the second part of that?

What would it be doing with the current space?

And that was the,

We were reserving that area for a future public art installation possibility.

The 125 was a ballpark estimate to move it 25 feet from where it currently is.

So it would be unassembled, stored somewhere, and then reassembled 25 feet to the north.

The reason why the statute needs to be moved for West Main, we could keep it and just relocate it.

But it needs to be relocated with West Main is because we're trying to get rid of that slip lane, that right lane that goes from West Main to right onto Ridge.

Yeah.

So we're trying to remove that and create a little pedestrian area.

I do not.

I'd be curious because, I mean, it sounds, my sense of things was it wasn't in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars.

I think it has a lot to do with the unknowns of what is the pedestal?

Is the pedestal a piece of granite or is it assembled and are we trying to carefully disassemble it and relocate it?

I think there's a little concern with

Yeah, the over $100,000 price is the estimate to take the statue down, store it while West Main was improved, and then replace it.

Or presumably, it would also be less

then it would be less to move it and give it to somebody else who then has the obligation to put it up wherever they're going to put it up.

Correct.

Yes, but it's a historic piece

of art.

Whether you agree with that assessment or not, that's how VDHR will be looking at this.

So if we use state funds, we have to go that more expensive route of things.

If we went out of the general fund,

Yes.

And it's the whole thing of they don't, VDHR does not want to dictate what the locality does with their resources.

I can say personally, I would be interested

and an estimate and plan of using general funds then?

Moving it to, I guess, I mean, do we know?

Well, let me offer this.

I think

What I would advise at this point is if there's a consensus of counsel that you do want to look at using local funds to remove the statue.

I think it would be imperative upon staff to take a look at number one, the logistics of dismantling the statue and removing it and also coming to counsel with options on

ultimately where this is disposed in terms of whether it's the Lewis and Clark Museum, whether you want us to put out a RFP of some sort, or whether you want to dispose of it in another manner.

But I think if today, if council could give us a consensus that you want

And I would like to just say even before that, if there were organizations who responded to the request and that could potentially limit our cost, we would know

if we can know that first before we are even talking about general fund dollars, right?

There may be a request that comes in that we find suitable and that we can have that conversation over.

And if the Lewis and Clark Center submits a request and there is a partnership that doesn't require us to pay for the entire removal,

If that's understood, again, if there's a consensus on council, then we could look at that and first go with sort of an RFP to say,

are you interested in the disposition of this statue?

And if so, would you be willing to move it or include a broad solicitation for outside parties to propose?

Like you stated, if they're willing to pay for the disposition cost and the moving cost, I mean, we can certainly take a look at that and ultimately staff can then come back to council with

And I agree with that being the first pass but I think it is still prudent for us to give a signal to staff that if what is our preference of it being local dollars versus not because it does sound like we have a lot less flexibility if we're going to be relying on it being state dollars.

And so I certainly want us to be vetting like

who can help us to cover and share these costs.

But at the end of the day, it does seem like if we want the flexibility to be able to dispose of this in whatever way that we can't necessarily be leaning on those state dollars.

And I understand too, and hopefully we'll have a better understanding of what those costs are after this process.

The one thing I'm against is wasting either local or state dollars by moving it six feet temporarily until we then remove it someplace else entirely.

Yes.

That's... And I think that the prior council decided it wasn't coming back to West Main Street, regardless.

And Mr. Blair, in that, you know, solicitation for the proposal, if there can be

We will certainly make that part of the solicitation if they want to provide a

Okay.

That's certainly helpful.

Thank you very much.

Yes, please.

Um, thank you.

Um, the value engineering as well as the future direction or support of the project.

Yeah, well, counselors, are there any questions at this time before public comment?

Yes, sorry, I apologize.

Whether to move forward with the value engineering, how aggressive would you like?

How much of a role do you want to play in it?

It sounds like for the Belmont Bridge that, you know, maybe there was even a more aggressive thing put out there that then we still, staff still have the option to kind of tailor back from based on the objectives of that project.

But we still have that same flexibility here because

Certainly want us to stretch ourselves to try to value engineer this as much as possible, but also have the option to evaluate like, oh, does it even make sense?

Or is that going to diminish what the objective of the project is?

When we think about how deep are we asking you to go, it's where I think I'm having the hardest time knowing what direction to get there, because I would think that we're gonna go to some level of depth, I guess we're trying to talk about dollars.

Well, and I think with city council serving as the steering committee, it would be good to hear your input.

There are certain things on West Main.

I certainly hear everyone's comments that this is an expensive project.

There are certain design features that if we were provided direction such as, and I know this is a touchy one, the soil cells are very expensive.

the level of lighting, the level of site furnishings, the type of transit stop.

There are ways to save money, but I'm not sure with this project more than any other project, this has a lot to do with design.

So ensuring that I am and staff is meeting your intent and your direction, I guess I am requesting permission to get your input on the value engineering study

I guess the new counselors it's even probably before there's any more work to do since this is really your first opportunity to kind of weigh in on what are your thoughts about continuing on the current path?

Is that something that you all support

if they're doing this value engineering.

And I think the Belmont Bridge example was a $2 million reduction based on the figures we just saw.

Are you comfortable with supporting?

And I know it could be different based on that this is a totally different project, but just how are you all feeling about the support?

And if

When I saw that chart of needs, whether we continued or not, is there a different direction that you would want staff to go in and to give us some information on what the cost would be around those needs versus maybe continuing.

And I know staff has done a lot of work, so I'm not at any way, I'm just asking the questions about just where are we

Well, I would like to know what the costs of those items are.

Frankly, more to help justify it in both in my own mind, the whole project in my own mind, as well as in dealing with

The people who want to fuss at us for the amount of money that's being involved, if we're going to mount an effective defense of the project and why we're doing this, more information would be helpful.

It's not likely to change my personal view of how we ought to go forward.

I can show you some information about the cost of some of the elements that were on the slide for the existing maintenance needs.

You know, for the signal replacements, the repaving, the re-striping, replacement of a lot of the ADA ramps, you're probably in the range of two to three million dollars just in normal, you know, routine upkeep and replacement of existing infrastructure.

There's another consideration I can't give you a number for right now is sort of the other benefits

to like the stormwater improvement infrastructure.

So for example, West Main is proposing to replace a lot of the stormwater infrastructure, pipes, endless things like that.

That's just to keep the current design of infrastructure just to replace it to meet today's needs.

I'll piggyback on that point.

West Main has been going full speed for some time now, so staff hasn't necessarily been accounting all of the alternative costs, if that makes sense.

We could certainly do that exercise, but there's not a 15-year running tally of all of the other maintenance costs.

But to Marty's point, every single ramp on West Main Street needs to be rebuilt because it hasn't been paved since 1993.

So not a single one there is compliant.

I think there was 10 new ramps that are required.

On West Main, that's going to be every bit of five or six grand a pop on top of rebuilding all the ADA ramps, all the stormwater infrastructure that's failing.

So it is not insignificant.

Well, let me say my interest is not to get it to the penny or even to the closest $10,000.

but just, you know, for the nearest $50,000, I don't know what a reasonable figure is, but if I'm trying to defend to people who are complaining about the amount of money that the city is spending on the Main Street streetscape, if I can say, listen, we're going to have to spend $5 million of this anyway, it doesn't matter for my defense of the project whether the answer is 4.9 or 5.1.

I guess the question of the value engineering study, I would certainly want to be able to see all that information and have some input on it as a council.

Because I guess one of the questions to me is,

all the different ways to bring the cost of the project down if we begin to reach a point in certain areas where the intent of the project from the design perspective and some of the bigger picture visions of the project what do those things get lost or sacrificed in bringing down the cost and some of the questions that brings up because obviously at least from my understanding of the project it's as I think you mentioned it's so expensive because there's this much larger vision of like it being a

That can definitely be done.

And with the value engineering study, they would propose instead of using this treatment, we would propose that.

And this is the cost savings that you'd be looking at.

That's the level that I think I'm at as well in terms of what I mean, there are just certain like

The foundational things of this design in terms of the infrastructure itself, I don't know that I feel this should be debatable or should be value engineered out or else we're losing the whole reason we even need this from a functional standpoint.

I'm not going to be the expert designer either, but I do feel like it's worth us looking at the costs.

I know it's not insignificant and I've seen some of the things that have been put forward and I'm just like, oh wow, like this is maybe this is more than what we need for this facet of the project.

It's less functional and more on the design side.

So I definitely agree.

I would be interested in

And separate from that, definitely a huge question mark for me is that VDOT funding and what kind of cost reductions would be or if they're necessary at all in order to make that application more competitive.

Because obviously if we're not receiving that or receiving that in a reduced amount, we're talking about,

It was a revenue sharing application for phase one.

It had scoring issues for smart scale.

Yeah, so phase one is fully funded with the statute, so we're good.

They weren't specific.

I know that that figure was, um, they came up with that figure based on a letter from the city where we took all the pedestrian improvements from each of the phases and tallied them up.

And that's how the 5 million figure, um, kind of got established.

But I would imagine that they would be most interested obviously in applying it as close to grounds as possible.

Obviously they're going to use the whole corridor, but the closer, the better.

So phase three or four would be.

I did just want to, this question had come to me from somebody.

We've gotten a little bit of interest in the Dewery-Brown Bridge.

And how is that, because I know that's kind of the cutoff point for the West Main Street to sign.

Okay, so we have worked with the community a little bit on historic interpretation.

We're dialing it back a bit.

It was pretty extensive what we were doing.

So from the proposal that was submitted by Ms.

Vannieris and Ms.

Slaughter, it had to do with adding some additional signage on the bridge.

That's certainly doable.

adding banners to the light poles.

We'll just have to ensure that that could be accommodated on the light pole that we choose.

The light pole that we were looking to use is the same one on Belmont.

That helps with maintenance costs and replacement and all of those lovely things.

So that could be doable.

The third option was installing some kind of art through a design competition on the panels on the bridge.

And we weren't actually trying to touch the bridge, go underneath the bridge, touch the railing, the piers, the whole bit.

That's going to add a lot of coordination costs and it's just not necessary right now.

So we weren't really thinking about doing the design competition for the art.

Well, it sounds like it may make more sense for that to be done something the city does as a separate process, but sort of timed in conjunction in some ways with the West Main Streetscape rather than like making it 100% part of the streetscape.

Thank you.

Please, please let's not have the engineering division do that.

I mean, I was just, maybe if we're doing something like that, we opened up like Beta Bridge is done up it and have it open to the community, but the Charlottesville community instead.

I believe they've been part of the interpretation.

I'm certain that they will be a part of it as we move forward.

I know from the historic district viewpoint, we kind of have an exception because it's a streetscape project from the state level.

But we've been working with BAR because they are our board of architectural review from historic district entrance corridor, the whole bit.

If I could just

to circle back to a question from Councilor Snook earlier.

Mr. Brown, David Brown, our new Director of Public Works is on the meeting display here.

Yes, I just presented an inquiry just to find out what the potential cost was for them.

And it was $110,000 total.

61,000 was associated with construction.

In other words, they had to do various improvements with the removal of the foundation.

So that's also associated with that work.

But the cost of just flat out moving the thing was roughly $49,000.

I believe so.

If there were trees that were causing the poles to go down and it was impacting their service,

then yes, they would pay.

They paid for a portion on the interchange project for that exact reason.

However, because we're requesting it and it's basically our dime.

So they consider it an improvement.

They're not asking for it.

Will they benefit from this?

Absolutely.

There you go.

If you're in the audience and you want to speak to counsel about the West Main streetscape, just click the raise hand icon in the Zoom webinar.

If you're joining us via telephone, you can press star nine to raise your hand.

Each person will get three minutes to address counsel.

And our first participant is Peter Krebs.

Good afternoon, council.

Thanks for the opportunity.

And it was actually good to hear your discussion before speaking.

I think I come from the same place you do, pretty much, on this thing.

I also wanted to take just a quick second to shout out to staff for the recent decision to make it safer to walk on the Belmont Bridge.

That's good.

We'll talk about it more later, maybe something

similar temporary could happen on West Main as well.

Again, a future conversation.

This project is super important because it's the backbone of our entire transportation network really.

It's the flattest best way to travel between the heart of the city and the region's largest employer.

COVID has also really underlined how important streetscapes are.

So now more than ever.

People of color are actually several times more likely to be killed or injured as pedestrians, and underinvestment in infrastructure is undoubtedly a part of that.

And often that underinvestment is cloaked in the language of responsibility, but the effect is not a good one.

In fact, a pedestrian lost their life a few weeks ago in a nearby location where proper infrastructure was lacking.

I think it's really smart to explore value engineering, and it looks like you've arrived at a good process for that.

But remember that things like trees, benches, and highly visible crosswalks are not amenities.

They're actually what determines whether someone will use the corridor or not.

So you don't have value if people are unwilling to use the infrastructure.

So keep that stuff in mind.

And also we know that it's how the road is designed and things like trees and crosswalks that determine how fast someone drives on that road.

It's not about the speed limit.

And then also this was in my earlier comments.

I know that we agree on it, but the streetscapes visual cues in terms of artwork or other items that are in the streetscape,

play a large role in whether someone feels welcome or not in the corridor.

And you can interpret that how you will.

So I'll just close by saying that it's a costly project and value measures are merited, but there's also been a lot of conversation about this project.

It's not

you know, something that's a fresh thing.

So explore value engineering and stay focused on the value that the project will deliver.

Our next speaker is Kay Slaughter.

We can.

Thank you.

I'm calling in for my phone, so I'm not quite sure how it works.

Anyway, thank you very much for taking my public comment.

And thank you, Ms.

Magill, for mentioning the Drury Brown Bridge.

And I appreciate the discussion.

And I think both Ms.

Vanyaris and I would be especially pleased

if we could continue to be part of the public process and know more about when it was going to happen.

I do agree that I think Historic Resources Committee and staff should be involved really with the whole West Main Street because there's so many historic resources in addition to the Drury Brown Bridge.

And I agree with the comments about focusing on letting the public art aspect be part of another project and focusing on

the potential of flags and the signage but really if I hadn't listened to this meeting today I wouldn't know that the polls are dependent on what you get for the Belmont Bridge and that it's all being done together and this is the kind of thing that's always so frustrating to citizens that you find out after the fact like oh sorry we already bought the polls and they won't accommodate flags so I think it's really important to have these design discussions early and to get input

from a wide variety of people.

And again, as I said in a memo that I sent to all of the council members, this is the one memorial, and I later realized other than Jefferson, that we have to local people, people who lived in Charlottesville and who contributed greatly to our history.

So I appreciate it being brought into the conversation and I hope there will be ways for

Those of us who are citizens as well as the People on Historic Resources Committee to participate later in the process.

Thank you.

If you'd like to raise your hand, click that icon in the Zoom webinar.

Right now, we don't have any hands raised.

If you're on via telephone, you can press star 9.

Thank you.

Okay.

I do have one question about the value engineering.

Is there usually a percentage range that it usually will stop at?

Like it's not going to cut the project by like 50%, right?

Not that I'm aware of.

And that's not how we have tended to view the value engineering.

We always, we have been fortunate in the past with our other transportation projects to have enough funding.

So

we weren't particularly looking for a particular dollar amount.

It was just how could we improve it while still being responsible with the federal or state and local dollars.

Just asking for my, if we start comparing for me and my one,

Fifth, you know, Vote, projects like this up against where we are now with schools, reconfiguration project and things like that, then that takes a very different turn for me than it has in the past because we're in a different climate now than we have been and we don't know what the long-term looks like.

Well, and I can, it's good to know because I can communicate this to our

a consultant that we're using for value engineering.

It would be RK&K is who I have a scope with.

They're one of our on-call consultant teams.

So it was pretty easy to do, but they've also had past experience working with the public and working with city councilors in the past, particularly for the interchange they're currently working on Fontaine.

So it's good to communicate to them that we might be open to something that we wouldn't necessarily have been open to on previous projects as in

There's always a very easy way to save money.

Why don't you just do sidewalk on one side and not on both sides?

This wouldn't work for this project.

It would have worked for the interchange project, but that is something that we wouldn't even consider.

What is the rough timeline that it takes to kind of go through that process with a consultant?

Well, I have the scope ready.

So then we would just need to schedule.

We've worked out that it could all be done electronically.

So that's not an issue.

So they take a couple of days.

Well, about a week looking at the plans and all the previous correspondence.

We meet, introduce them to the project and kind of what our goals are.

They look intensively for two days, come up with a bunch of alternatives and then turn around a report.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

Just real quick to Mayor Walker's question.

There is no industry standard for what the value of engineering is.

It's certainly not going to be 50%.

And then if you look at

Belmont, I think that was on the order of 10% of construction was identified and we went with 5%.

That's probably on the order of what we're going to get here.

But as sort of what Mr. Payne alluded to earlier, if once you start chopping into even what's

Benches, lighting, all of those things.

There is a vision that goes into this design and you know that's where you start getting into how that would work but Jeanette and I maybe can meet with that consultant and talk about if they could do like a first blush of

Here are some alternatives.

Is any of this stuff either worth entertaining before they do maybe a second iteration of digging down to those details?

And I'm, Jeanette's more familiar with this process.

Yeah, I think setting it up again for letting RK&K know how aggressive we would like to be, whether we actually do it or not, that's a whole other thing.

The value engineering report kind of does it on order of magnitude.

So you're not going to get, um, basically they're going to present all the options and then it's at that point we evaluate.

So there's no need for a second blush, I guess, just as long as they know.

In the past, I would have told you never look at a different light fixture, but in this case, Hey, take another look at it.

Can something attractive be found that we would consider?

because I do understand we do not want to take all the aesthetic treatments off because that does ruin the vision of the project, but if we have five different seating arrangements, can we get by with three?

And is that cheaper?

It's also reason for why we're talking with council right now is to get direction on

What are your objectives or goals for this project and how we want to incorporate those into it?

I would certainly be interested in looking at any options, but I think one of the questions that will raise for me and I imagine Council as a whole is if cuts are reaching a point where we're sacrificing the original intent and vision of the entire streetscape project, the question of what is really the

It's definitely something I'll be thinking about in terms of you know for

making deep enough cost cuts to the projects that are basically eliminate what made it a unique project that

became a community priority in terms of creating a streetscape that was unique enough for more people to use it and to perform a different kind of function than it had before.

And then final comment is just I would agree with others about, I think there are a lot of historic resources throughout West Main Street and Drew Brown as well.

So I think that's more a task for us as a council separately from this process, but I,

I did have one question about earlier some of the numbers.

There was, you mentioned that with the upgrades, it will be costing more in maintenance, not with the parks and recs maintenance part, but before that, there was a slide about how it was gonna cost more in upkeep in general.

For a time period, there will not be extra costs because it will be brand new infrastructure like you pointed out.

It's just that as we add more historic interpretive signs or we change the material from a concrete sidewalk to a paver sidewalk, some of these are more maintenance intensive.

We're adding a lot of street furniture.

As I've mentioned, soil cells, which the city doesn't have any history with, the soil cells are allowing us to treat the stormwater from quality as well as quantity, and it allows us to have larger trees.

It also minimizes disruption with utilities.

So that's all wonderful.

Oh my, if we have a problem, I guess is what, it just, it's a little bit more expensive.

Well, let's,

finish this conversation first.

Just real quick for clarification, if just in case anybody starts Googling it, it's silvacel, right?

Yes, and that's one of the items that I may not be able to

require there are various manufacturers of soil cells.

However, silva cells are very difficult to design.

So you can't just switch one soil cell from another.

Okay.

Well, one comment that I, I mean, you were asking sort of what are council's priorities and being one of the newbies, I was not around during any previous discussion, but part of what I want this project to do is to connect the university to downtown at a bike and pedestrian level.

in a way that is inviting, that causes people to say, oh, that's an easy walk, or that's an easy bike ride, or something like that.

Right now, it's not a very pedestrian-friendly place.

For one thing, half of it's under construction of various sorts.

But hopefully by the time the end of 2024 rolls around, we will have gotten through all of this construction.

But people, I would like to see it be the kind of, you know, almost a boulevard kind of sensibility to it that causes people to like it as a, as a, as a bike and pedestrian way and

So we have an upcoming joint session.

And if the goal is to connect UVA to the downtown, then UVA needs to participate at a higher level if they're going to be the primary users of the service and with the cost.

So that's just something to think about when we have our joint session because

Well, I'm not saying they would be the primary consumer, but certainly they would be.

That's an important piece of things.

Obviously, part of what we want to do is we want to have people feel like they're, like it's easy for them to get downtown and that would help downtown business and so on.

as well as helping people feel like they can get down to the university from downtown.

And so it's a two-way, literally a two-way street.

Any other comments, questions?

Of course, I'm reluctant to do this.

Mayor Walker, this is Peggy Vanieris.

Yes.

We can.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, Mayor Walker.

I was watching on Facebook and I couldn't figure out how to get into the public hearing.

And so I'm afraid I finally just did.

And that's why I'm late.

I'll only take a minute.

And I want to just reiterate, thank you for talking about the Drew Brown Bridge.

I think that, you know, Cole Hendricks has often said that Drew was probably the most unappreciated person in this whole community, a great civil rights leader.

And so I think the things that Kate and I have talked about is there are many ways to make that bridge more visible and so that people can understand about these important people.

But we're not saying banners or this or that or the things to do.

We're just giving suggestions.

And our suggestions are not very expensive either.

But right now, you don't even see the name Drury Brown very well as you walk along.

I just want to reiterate, we're not saying do this or that.

We're just hoping to make it a little more visible.

And you don't have to spend a tremendous amount of money to do that, considering the cost of the whole corridor.

So I don't want to tie the hands of the designers, but just some thoughts to honor this incredible man and other people that have done so much for this community.

Thank you.

OK.

All right, so we'll close public comment again.

Counselors, are there any additional questions or comments?

No.

Yes, thank you very much.

I'll move forward with the value engineering

as well as knowing that the statue will not be moved with this project.

And I can move forward with the environmental.

And I would just like to thank Jeanette.

This was a great presentation.

I really appreciate the update and the timing of it.

It's been really helpful.

Have a good evening.