Spring Start Date for Park Street Enhancements

The Brooklyn community will soon be seeing progress on the long-awaited road enhancements planned in the Park Street Road Diet.

Discussions and plans for this project, part of the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), stretch back several years. The development team on this project include Prosser, Inc. and Prime AE. According to a summary of the project in the CIP, it will “provide modifications to existing roadway infrastructure from Forest Street to Stonewall Street with the Brooklyn Neighborhood to enhance pedestrian and bicycle connectivity and improve vehicular safety.”

The planned enhancements include adding a two-way protected bike lane, on-street parking, expanded sidewalk areas, reduced roadway widths (for safer pedestrian crossing) and the planting of street trees.

Earlier last month, Mayor Donna Deegan spoke on work the city is doing to streamline its processes to ensure projects – particularly projects like the Park Street Road Diet, that have been in the pipeline for quite a while – progress and that those streamlining efforts are “continuing.”

“From a technology standpoint, we’re going to a DocuSign system where, obviously if you have digital signatures as opposed to stacks of paper, things are going to move through a whole lot faster and more efficiently,” she said. “That’ll save time, it’ll save money.”

In February, The Resident News reported on the Downtown Investment Authority’s approval back in January of a one-year lease for a parcel of land on Bay Street to JEA to use as a construction easement  to install chilled water lines along Bay Street. As payment for the lease, JEA has offered in-kind services at a minimum of $300,000 for the Park Street Road Diet project.

According to the City of Jacksonville, the project is currently budgeted at $5.2 million, though updated costs will be available once the contractor submits bid pricing.

Construction is currently slated to begin this spring.