Design work likely to start soon on St. Charles creek improvements

After accepting a grant last month to help address recurring flooding issues, St. Charles aldermen are poised to push forward a contract to start the long-awaited 7th Avenue Creek project.

The $369,576 agreement with McHenry-based HR Green Inc. would include the design and engineering work for the project's first phase. The plan calls for acquiring land and improving the creek's corridor from Washington to South 10th avenues - the most problematic segment of the waterway, Public Works Director Peter Suhr said.

The city council is expected to vote Monday on the contract, approved this week at the committee level. The bulk of the design work will be completed in the next 18 months, Suhr said, though the deal extends into a third fiscal year to allow for permitting. Construction on the creek improvements is slated to begin in 2021.

"This really gets us kicked off this fiscal year," he said.

The upgrades planned for the project's first phase have a roughly $5.8 million price tag. St. Charles recently was awarded a $1.2 million grant from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to assist with those costs, including a portion of the design engineering agreement.

This fiscal year, the city will be on the hook to pay $95,025 for HR Green's services, with $24,540 of those expenses being offset by the state funding.

Plans to improve the 7th Avenue Creek corridor have been in the works since 2008, when heavy rains and severe flooding prompted the Federal Emergency Management Agency to revise its flood insurance rate maps for the area. The city then developed a parallel master plan to acquire properties along the creek and mitigate the impact of a wider floodplain.

Phase 1 encompasses a largely residential area that historically has been prone to flooding, Suhr said. Planned upgrades include adding a landscaping buffer, replacing storm culverts, creating a parklike setting with a walking path, and redirecting the now-linear creek to meander more naturally, according to city documents.

Updates of the project's design process will be presented to the city council periodically "to make sure we're on the right track," Suhr said. A portion of the design work could be complete within the first few months of 2019.