PITTSBURG, Kan. — It’s been a juggling act for city projects in the past year, and it won’t let up for another year, with Pittsburg workers having taken on about two dozen diverse projects across multiple departments that total about $36 million worth of work.
Here are updates on several of them:
Police and fire
The new Fire Station No. 1, which opened for business this spring, is “pretty much 98 percent complete,” said interim City Manager John Van Gorden last week, with the punch list checked off and just a few minor details to be worked out.
As for the Pittsburg Law Enforcement Center, which also opened this spring, about 10 percent remains to be done before Van Gorden will call it complete.
“We have a few punch list issues with warranties, the security system, the air conditioner,” he said.
None of these items significantly interferes with the daily operation of the two centers, he said.
Airport
The city staff is continuing to work on the Atkinson Airport master plan, something the Federal Aviation Administration requires on a periodic basis.
Community leaders have cited the improvements as vital because of the airport’s value in attracting business to the area and serving existing businesses, including seven corporate jets.
The FAA is paying for 95 percent of the plan. The City Commission this spring approved paying the remaining 5 percent from the city’s revolving loan fund.
Water plant
Van Gorden said he expects to let the bids in late August for an $8.7 million project to upgrade the water-treatment plant. The staff is looking at final plans, which the Kansas Department of Health and Environment then must approve.
This spring, Van Gorden had said he hoped to have the bids in at the end of July, but “with stimulus money comes a lot of paperwork,” he said, referring to the $1.74 million the city received in federal stimulus money to put toward the project.
Officials expect the work to take about 18 months to complete once construction begins.
Streets
A Kansas Department of Transportation project that’s been on the books for a few years is 23rd Street from Joplin Street to Broadway.
City crews have removed bricks and concrete, taken the dirt out because it wouldn’t compact well, then rebuilt the street in order to make it an improved thoroughfare between the new overpass on 23rd Street and the North Broadway commercial area.
Administrators have said that with truck traffic coming out of the industrial park off Rouse Street, 23rd Street most likely will be a highly traveled road when it is finished in the next few weeks.
Wastewater
On the drawing board are plans and specifications for two pump stations. One is south of Mount Carmel Regional Medical Center and is a project that Van Gorden said he expects to “come to light this fall.” The other is an aging pump station at Meadowbrook Mall that has failed several times and has caused sewage problems for residents of Random Acres.
A $1 million sanitary-sewer project is ready to be let for bids, Van Gorden said. Crews have identified lines throughout the city that need to be replaced or have new liners installed to prevent rain from getting in.
Meanwhile, one project that administrators checked off was a $1 million, five-year project to rehabilitate the city’s manholes, many of which took crews a while to find.
All manholes — hundreds and hundreds of them — now have Global Positioning System coordinates, and they have been made airtight to guard against sewer gas and water infiltration.
It wasn’t easy: Some were 4 feet deep in farm fields, covered with soil so farmers wouldn’t hit them with plows, and some were bricked up 10 to 20 feet deep, having been put in many years ago.
“It was a search and seek,” said Van Gorden.
