By Bonita Wilborn
The City of Fort Payne will soon be getting some upgrades. This will happen since the Fort Payne City Council recently approved a $25 million bond issue.
The Council began debating a number of projects about a year ago, but they all finally became possible after the 1-cent sales tax was passed several months ago.
The Fort Payne City Council had a wish list of about $38 million worth of projects to be completed throughout the city. They recently held a meeting where they worked diligently and were able to cut that number down to their budgeted $25 million.
The Council approved Rec Center projects, including building a new basketball gym, as well as constructing a soccer and tennis complex. In addition to the funding for those projects, money was also allocated for the resurfacing of some roads, for the purpose of tearing down the old hospital building, for creating a greenway along Big Wills Creek and, for redevelopment of the downtown area.
A project that is a must is the renovation of the building on the intersection of Gault Avenue and 5th Street and the decision was made that this would be the time to renovate that whole intersection including: new lighting, curb, gutter and sidewalks.
A portion of the funding will be coming from a TAP grant, which will enable the City to redo two blocks of sidewalks downtown so they can begin addressing some of these downtown infrastructure things very soon and get started with the planning process on the other projects.
City officials anticipate it will be several weeks before the bond issue is finalized, but as soon as everything is complete the projects will get underway.
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