October 25, 2024
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Work on Utica’s retail plaza to begin in 2024

Village delays open house on outdoor venue

By Tom Collins
Ten new shops opened for the season at the Batavia Boardwalk Shops on Friday, May 12, 2023. The Batavia Boardwalk shops also include a pop-up shop which will feature a new vendor each weekend.

Utica has made progress toward an outdoor retail plaza north of downtown – the village acquired a key parcel – but it looks as if development won’t begin until spring. A similar outdoor retail set up is shown here in Batavia. (Sandy Bressner – sbressner@shawmedia.com)

Utica has made progress toward an outdoor retail plaza north of downtown – the village acquired a key parcel – but it looks as if development won’t begin until spring.

On Thursday, the Utica Village Board learned that an open house displaying plaza designs, tentatively planned for Monday, has been postponed. Village President David Stewart said he’s now looking at early November for the public to come in and see more concrete plans.

One of the issues is that the village now has more land to work with, having acquired a stray parcel adjacent to the existing land.

“We want to maximize the area we have to work with,” village engineer Kevin Heitz said.

Stewart said he wanted preliminary work launched this winter, but the updated sketches mean that “realistically, it will be spring before we do any ground work there.”

In August 2022, the village was awarded a Rebuild Illinois Downtowns and Main Streets capital grant worth almost $1.25 million to construct the outdoor retail plaza.

Separately, the village awarded a pair of contracts – to Wozniak Concrete ($131,947) and Advanced Asphalt Co. ($151,070) – for repairs and pavement to Hitt and Griffin streets and portions of Washington Street.

Heitz said the combined bids exceeded his estimate by 13.5%, but the Village Board agreed that the repairs are urgent and need to be addressed by the end of the year.

Wozniak, it was noted, can begin next week.

Finally, Stewart pronounced the recent Burgoo Festival a success. The new roundabout greatly improved the flow of traffic, and the festival was particularly well attended.

“This was probably the busiest Burgoo that I’ve ever seen,” Stewart said.

In other matters, the Village Board:

  • Set trick-or-treat hours from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 31.
  • Announced the Fall Fun Fest will be from 12:30 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 21, and approved a festival budget not to exceed $2,000.
  • Entered an intergovernmental agreement with the Utica Fire Protection District regarding providing fiber optic access to the water tower.
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