Photo provided An overhead view of the low-head dam in the East Fork White River which would be removed as part of the proposed Riverfront Project.
City officials are hoping to move forward with a proposed riverfront redevelopment between the Second and Third Street bridges in the coming months — and potentially break ground on the project this spring — after officials received the final green light from environmental regulators.
At the same time, the estimated costs for the proposed project have climbed to $14 million due to increased construction and labor costs, as well as additional costs associated with environmental mitigation requirements imposed by state and federal regulators, said city redevelopment director Heather Pope.
The project, which has estimated price tags ranging from $8.6 million and $8.9 million in the past, seeks to address safety issues related to the deteriorating low-head dam in the East Fork White River without damaging wetlands located upstream or impacting the river water level through Mill Race Park.
In addition, the project is expected to safeguard the riverbanks from ongoing erosion, including on the west side of the river near the Third Street bridge, which was the site of a landfill from 1938 to 1966 that is believed to have accepted 3.46 million gallons of industrial wastes, including solvents, bases, paints and heavy metals, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
City officials also have proposed building overlooks of the river, connections with the People Trail system and an in-water recreation area, branding the project as an effort to “create an iconic riverfront experience that improves safety.”
On Tuesday, the Columbus Redevelopment Commission heard updates on the project during a presentation by officials Hitchcock Design Group and consulting group J.S. Held.
“This has been a long time coming, almost 20 years from a conceptual standpoint, seven years from a current planning standpoint,” Jason Larrison of J.S. Held during the meeting. “It should be noted that we spent nearly three years working through the regulatory process.”
Since 2018, the project has gone through several rounds of discussions with regulators, including some agencies that told The Republic previously that the permitting process was taking longer than usual because they were not used to looking at installing recreational features in rivers as part of a dam-removal project.
Until recently, officials had been navigating a maze of regulatory hurdles in which four environmental regulators — the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Indiana Department of Environmental Management, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — needed to sign off the project before bids can go out and construction can start.
One of the final hurdles included getting approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which had requested input from the EPA, city officials said previously. The Louisville Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told The Republic on Tuesday that it had approved a permit that would allow the city to proceed with the project on Sept. 21.
Within a week of the permit’s approval, city officials had sent out a request for proposals to be the project’s construction manager as constructor, which would manage the process of sending out for bids on the specific aspects of the project.
The funding for the project is expected to come from a variety of sources, officials said.
In 2022, the riverfront project received a $1.72 million Next Level Trail grant from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and a $600,000 READI grant, a multi-million-dollar regional grant program in Indiana that is funded through the American Rescue Plan.
Besides that, city officials said they plan to use Central Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district funds to bankroll the project. A TIF district is a mechanism that allows the commission to siphon off increasing property taxes generated on commercial and industrial properties in a selected area to fund projects. TIF funds must be used for economic development or investment in infrastructure.
However, the project’s final price tag could end up being somewhat lower, as officials have included a $3 million contingency into the estimated costs in case unanticipated costs arise during the project.
“We’re digging in the river. We’re digging next to a landfill. We are digging around a sanitary sewer line that wasn’t exposed when it was originally installed over 100 years ago. We’re taking out a 100-year-old dam,” Pope said. “So, there could be things that aren’t visible that we’ve not planned for.”
However, the project is not yet a done deal, officials said.
The Columbus Redevelopment Commission and the Columbus City Council still need to sign off on the proposed project, including the updated estimated costs, Pope said.
The commission plans to hold a joint meeting with the city council on Nov. 14 in which officials will present updates on the project and an analysis for the city’s potential return on investment. Neither the commission nor the council will vote on the project during that meeting.
The redevelopment commission plans to consider approving funding for the project during its Nov. 20 meeting. If the commission approves the funding, the project would head before the city council on Dec. 5, as council approval is required for expenditures that exceed $500,000.
Should the council approve of the funding, city officials hope to have a construction manager in place by the end of the year and potentially break ground on the project in the spring.
“I would hope to break ground in the spring,” Pope said. “…I know that might be a little bit lofty, but we’re going for it. …And then it’d be about an 18-month-long process to construct all of the necessary improvements.”
