Wednesday, December 15, 2004
By Robert C. Burns
CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER

Muskegon officials moved forward Tuesday toward their goal of resurrecting the city's downtown.

The city commission selected engineers and environmental consultants for the former Muskegon Mall property, as well as a contractor to rebuild a downtown portion of Shoreline Drive.

Fleis & Vandenbrink Engineering of Muskegon was chosen from among nine bidders for final design and engineering work on the 23-acre downtown mall site. The firm's bid came to $151,600, to which $9,800 may be added for design of a snowmelt system as funds become available.

The city and Downtown Muskegon Development Corp., the mall property owner, are in the process of re-establishing streets and sidewalks that existed before the mall was built in the mid-1970s. The engineering firm will prepare final drawings and specifications for that, as well as for rebuilding of underground water and sewer and other utilities, where necessary.

Engineering and design work is a necessary step toward the seeking and awarding of construction contracts.

Money for this aspect of the downtown project will come from part of an enterprise community grant dating back to 1994. That money had to be committed before a Dec. 20 deadline, said Cathy Brubaker-Clarke, the city's director of economic and community development, even though the source of funds to rebuild Western Avenue and several intersecting streets still has not been nailed down.

Commissioners were assured by City Engineer Mohammed Al-Shatel that design and engineering work would not go out of date if street and utility construction did not begin immediately.

The commission also chose four consulting firms to work with downtown redevelopers and conduct environmental investigations in the area, which has been designated as a "Brownfield Redevelopment District."

They were Horizon Environmental of Grand Rapids, Prein & Newhof of Muskegon and Grand Rapids, ERM Inc. of Holland, and Westshore Consulting of Muskegon.

Individual sites will be assigned to those consulting firms on a round-robin basis as new businesses show interest in buying new lots in the newly replatted downtown mall area.

The city has received $1 million in grants and loans to help investors of mall-area properties perform environmental studies needed before construction can begin.

Brownfield properties offer investors state Single Business Tax credits, among other incentives. The mall area also is a state "Renaissance Zone" which provides a broad range of tax relief and other incentives for investment.

A Muskegon firm, Jackson-Merkey Contractors, was picked to rebuild an older portion of Shoreline Drive. It includes a badly worn portion of road between First and Fourth streets that was built in 1978, plus a newer portion finished in 1994 and dubbed Shoreline Drive West, which stretches south from Fourth to where the highway rejoins Webster Avenue.

Jackson-Merkey was among five bidders for the job. Its $1,788,462 bid was about $145,000 below the engineer's estimate, according to Al-Shatel.

The job will make the old portion compatible with recently completed Shoreline Drive East, and pave the way for designation of the lakefront highway as the new U.S. 31 Business Route through downtown Muskegon. After that, four-lane Muskegon and Webster avenues would go back under the city's jurisdiction.

© 2004 Muskegon Chronicle. Used with permission