The Aurora City Council has approved contracts that will go toward the remake of Broadway in the middle of downtown.
The city could be ready to move forward with the project by the spring of 2025, officials said.
City officials and the Illinois Department of Transportation have been discussing designs for the remake of Broadway between Benton and New York streets.
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Officials said they have finally come to agreement on the metrics – things the city and the state can both live with. Broadway is also state Route 25, which is why IDOT must approve any design changes.
One contract approved Tuesday night was actually a change order with HR Green to engineer the Broadway project. The change order is on a contract the city already has with HR Green to engineer the change of Galena Boulevard and New York from one-way streets through downtown to two-way.
Public Works officials decided the two projects should be connected.
Plans for the Broadway streetscape include removing all the sidewalks and replacing them by refiguring the street. On-street parking would be removed and the sidewalks expanded and include plantings and highlights at the intersections.
The roadway would remain two lanes in each direction, but with no parking and larger sidewalks, it would be safer, officials said.
The city received a $3 million grant for the Broadway project from the Rebuild Illinois Downtowns and Main Streets Capital Program that was designed to support commercial corridors that saw a slump during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some 50 commercial corridors and main streets across the state got money to put toward a makeover, part of more than $200 million in state and federal grants across Illinois.
The state originally allocated $50 million to the program in 2021, but because of a large number of applications, and eligible projects, state officials increased the funding.
Aurora has been moving toward redesign of the Broadway streetscape, and doing the underlying work necessary, since getting the grant in 2022.
Officials have been filling in all the remaining underground vaults under the sidewalks, and initiated a downtown parking study earlier this year to look at how to replace parking lost on Broadway.
As it stands now, about 20 parking spots would be lost along Broadway, but with additional parking lots, there would be a net gain in parking spots, officials have said.
In addition to the change order to the HR Green contract, the council on Tuesday night approved a $1.09 million contract for a sewer separation project along Broadway.
That project would be one of the last below-ground projects before work on the streetscape could begin, officials said.