Cookeville City Council will approve the first big step Thursday to move the 10th Street widening project forward.
Council will approve contracts to begin the right of way acquisitions along 10th Street. Public Works Director Greg Brown said the project will be done in two phases, starting from Chocolate Drive to Wilson Avenue.
“We’re trying to get that section complete, inline with opening of the shopping center that’s being built at the corner of Old Kentucky and 10th,” Brown said. “So there is some timing involved with that. We would like to start construction on it, late summer.”
Brown said there would be extra costs involved with hiring a consultant to acquire property, but it will speed up the process. Brown said the priority is to acquire the phase one property and get the project ready to bid before moving onto phase two.
“The second phase will start all the way to Fisk Road, it would start sometime during that time frame,” Brown said. “But it doesn’t have to be completed at that time. The critical section that we’re looking at is that first phase.”
Brown said that using a consultant to acquire property would have the consultant make contact and explain what the city is looking to accomplish by purchasing property. He said they would negotiate on behalf of Cookeville.
“It’s very time consuming to acquire property, particularly if there’s a lot of them,” Brown said. “We don’t really have a lot of people that have the time to go out there and do that because they still have their regular job to do. So they can usually do it faster than we can because we have to try to work it in between our normal duties.”
Improvements to 10th street, like widening the road, are intended to minimize the impact from traffic in the area.
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