Dixon City Council approves $12M funding agreement for final phase of riverfront redevelopment

DIXON – The Dixon City Council on Monday approved a joint funding agreement between the city and the Illinois Department of Transportation for the final phase of Dixon’s riverfront revitalization project that began 26 years ago.

The council’s riverfront development master plan began in 1998 with the formation of the Dixon Riverfront Commission. The plan includes four projects: the construction of Heritage Crossing, completed in 2009; the installation of a multi-use path that extends east along River Road from Galena Avenue to Route 2, also completed in 2009; the Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program multi-use path that runs west along the Rock River, completed in July; and Project Rock, which will extend the ITEP path with a pedestrian bridge across the river and is expected to be completed in 2025.

Project Rock is being funded by an estimated $12 million grant through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity program. The project will construct about 2.8 miles of multi-use path; build a pedestrian bridge over the Rock River using the old Illinois Central Railroad piers; and resurface about 0.8 miles of Page Drive, which is maintained by the Dixon Park District.

At a City Council meeting June 17, the council approved the first part of the RAISE grant agreement, which detailed the amount of federal funding that will be awarded for the project.

The agreement that the city approved Monday is part two of that agreement. In this one, the city has agreed to contribute $788,000 – using local infrastructure funds – to the construction of Project Rock.

“As a staff, we reviewed the numbers and the terms of the agreement. It’s a standard IDOT agreement,” Public Works Director Matt Heckman told the council.

The next step is putting the project out for bid.

Since Project Rock is funded through a grant from IDOT, the city isn’t doing its own bidding process. Instead, IDOT will put the project out for bid in September along with a group of other construction projects that it’s funding throughout the state, Heckman said in an interview with Shaw Local.

The actual work on the project is estimated to begin in the late winter or early spring. Typically, it would begin with tree removals because the state mandates that those removals are completed before March 31, Heckman said.

With an 18-month construction cycle, it’ll be more than a year before Project Rock is completed.

The city is planning to put together a tentative construction schedule. It hopes to minimize disruptions to any community events happening in Page Park during construction, Heckman said.

Until then, Heckman said, it’ll be about six weeks of anticipation as the city waits for the bid numbers to come back.