The Covington Board of Commissioners approved funding Tuesday night for intersection improvements at Highway Avenue and Altamont Road.
Specifically, the board approved a bid of $267,505 from Eaton Asphalt to improve the pedestrian crosswalks and install curb bump-outs, which extend the footprint of the curbs out into the road, to calm traffic.
The Devou Good Foundation will contribute $67,505 toward the construction and have already covered the design and engineering costs. The remaining funding will come from federal Community Development Block Grant funding.
The city had created a program called RIPPLE (Revitalization Includes People, Places, Lifestyles and Economic Investment) back in 2018 to create criteria for awarding the funds. The Devou Good Foundation, which manages Devou Park, applied for the funding, but the fact that Highway Avenue is a state road, plus the project’s necessary engineering, caused delays.
“This took a little while to propagate, and there was a lot of design and engineering that had to be done,” said Covington Community Development Manager Jeremy Wallace. “Then we had to do a couple rounds of bidding, and so it took a while from the time that we selected this RIPPLE project to now.”
The Public Works Department was unsure at Tuesday’s meeting how long the project would take to complete.
