Dixon applying for grants to redesign roads, add retention pond

DIXON — City leaders are working alongside the Illinois Department of Transportation to pursue a grant that, if awarded, would help fund $32 million in road redesign projects.

Dixon City Manager Danny Langloss told the Dixon City Council last week the city is going to co-apply with IODT with the hope of being awarded Rural Surface Transportation Grant funds.

Plans for that funding call for work to redesign South Galena Avenue from Eighth Street down to Keul Road and to turn Bloody Gulch Road into a three-lane road versus the current two lane, from Route 52, he said. “So all the way down by John Deere to South College to better serve that area,” he said.

The city has previously applied for the grant. While it was not a recipient, the city decided to again go after the funding, he said. The application is due in May.

Retention pond grant

Langloss also told the council the city has submitted a multimillion dollar grant application seeking to create a retention pond in the Fargo Creek TIF area that would serve the Gateway Project, areas to the south of there and would reduce and mitigate some of the flooding downstream.

“This would be a pond that is always a pond,” he said. “It wouldn’t be retention like the area across from Shamrock. It also includes a multi-use path that would connect from where ITEP [Illinois Transportation Enhancement Project] ends at Seventh [Street] and Depot [Avenue] all the way out to Gateway.”

The path would go up across the railroad tracks on Depot, go through Havrre town home development, which is going to begin in the summer, “up through property that we have in that area, through the Fulfs property and then come out on Bloody Gulch Road and ultimately tie into what really is the master plan out there,” he said.

Langloss said there are two other grants for which the city will be submitting applications for the same project, because it will be very expensive due to the amount of earth that needs to be moved.

“I think we’re gonna break into two phases, which will give us a better chance, I think, with some of the grants,” he said.