Pictured is an illustration of the work the City of Marysville plans for Plum Street near the corner of London Avenue and Ninth Street. The projects include a new park and replacement of a culvert on Plum Street.
(Image submitted)
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The area around Ninth and Plum streets could soon see a lot of development.
In addition to the hospital’s new construction, the city plans on making park and road improvements. The city will replace the culvert on Plum Street and repave a stretch of that road.
While the construction at Memorial Hospital is a convenient reason to carry out construction, City Engineer Jeremy Hoyt said the project has been on the city’s radar for years.
Hoyt said the culvert on Plum Street is old, and needs to be replaced. He said there are no specific problems with the culvert; it’s simply nearing the end of its 75-100 year lifespan.
“It’s not falling over or anything,” Hoyt said.
The city also plans to widen Plum Street from Ninth Street to the culvert. He said the project will make it “look more like a public street, like we did on Oak and Walnut.” The city also plans to repave Plum Street from the culvert to nearly the end of Memorial’s emergency room parking lot.
Hoyt said the city has had several meetings with Memorial to coordinate and prevent the projects from affecting each other.
According to Hoyt, the budget for the project is estimated to total up to $550,000.
The city could also see a new park soon.
Hoyt said Memorial officials contacted the city asking what it planned to do with the property nestled between London Avenue and Ninth Street at the nearby four-way intersection. The city owns the property, but has not developed it yet.
Hoyt said the hospital wanted to improve the aesthetic of the area, as motorists come toward the medical campus from the Uptown.
The design of the park is far from finalized. The city hopes to construct a small park on the property with high pedestrian access between the hospital and Uptown area.
The working name is Bicentennial Park, but Hoyt said that’s more of a placeholder. The park could end up with a completely different name. The city’s 200th anniversary will be celebrated in August of 2019.
“That has not been approved by anybody,” he said. “That’s just kind of the name we made up in-house.”
The budget for the park is estimated to be at about $200,000.
The city hopes to complete the improvements on Plum Street some time this year, with the park work being done in 2019. The street improvements, he said, will likely affect traffic more than the park.
“Even if it happened a year after Memorial’s opening, it’s not affecting anything,” he said. “Plum Street, that has to be done.”
Hoyt said bids for the Plum Street work will go out in a few months’ time, with work likely kicking off late this summer. He said it will hopefully be a “couple-month project, at the most.”
“If it turns out to be a spring 2019 project, then great, we’ve already got the plans sitting on the shelf,” he said.