East State Street Reconstruction Project among ITEP projects announced yesterday

By Gary Scott on May 8, 2018 at 7:44am

The Illinois Department of Transportation’s Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program, or ITEP, announced 54 projects yesterday, including a significant street project within the city of Jacksonville.

According to the Jacksonville Journal Courier, the local project that was approved through ITEP is the Historic East State Street Reconstruction project. With a total cost of about $1.03 million dollars, the federally-funded ITEP program will cover more than $800-thousand dollars of that total cost.

Included in this project are improvements to East State Street from the downtown square to Clay Street, which will use historic remnants of the city’s past not unlike the projects recently conducted to improve the square itself, as well as the North and South Main entrances to the square, according to the paper.

Specifically, the project will install lighting that accurately represents a certain historical period, new curb and gutter, sidewalks, brick-outlined sidewalks and crosswalks and plantings. There also proposed plans to have an arch put in that will span the street. This will be similar to that of the arches to those that were around the square in the 1900s.

According to the article, Hutchison Engineering is close to 90 percent complete with the planning and the project looks to be starting sometime during the winter.