ESCANABA, Mich. (WZMQ) – The City of Escanaba is making plans for more construction in the downtown this spring and summer.
On Thursday, Escanaba’s City Council approved $5.6 million in funding for sanitary sewer improvements. The work would coincide with ongoing streetscape construction on Ludington Street.
According to City Manager Jim McNeil, the cost is within the City’s budget. Roughly $4.5 million of it would come from grant funding, while the remaining $1.1 million would be covered by the City’s major street fund, water fund, and wastewater fund.
The grant money must be used by September. However, McNeil says the City is working to obtain an extension.
“If that is awarded—and we have a good feeling that maybe it will be—a lot of this then would get grant paid,” he told council members. “There’s some upside, that our non-grant money might go down. There’s also some risk that our non-grant money, of course, could go up depending on some of these grant deadlines, even associated with the existing project. If any of that work ends up occurring past mid-September, the City would be on the hook to cover any difference there.”
A date for the work to begin has not been set at this time.
