By Leslie Collins
Northeast News
March 9, 2011

For nearly a decade, city officials have been discussing a redesign of Chouteau Trafficway near Parvin. Now, plans are coming to fruition.

“Traffic congestion has been an issue from the go,” said Sean Demory, a spokesperson for the city’s Capital Projects Department. “Chouteau is a major route and it’s outlived its usefulness.

“The overall area and the amount of traffic that went through created a number of choke points to where traffic congestion was basically a fact of life, and that’s something we’re looking to resolve and make some substantial improvements to that area.”

Currently, stretches of Chouteau are two-lane and the redesign calls for constructing a four-lane road from 210 highway to I-35. Other additions will include turning Chouteau into a parkway with wide medians, rain gardens, other landscaping, bike lanes and a 10-foot wide bike trail on the west side.

To provide an update of the Chouteau Parkway project, Ralph Davis, P.E., of the city’s Capital Projects Department attended the March 2 Chouteau I-35 Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Committee meeting.

Davis said a total of 32 tracts (properties) along Chouteau are slated for total right-of-way acquisition by the city. Twenty-five properties have either settled with the city or are in the process of settling and seven have yet to settle.

The last offer for those seven properties was slightly above $1 million, Davis told the committee. Condemnation hearings at Clay County Circuit Court are currently underway for the seven properties and Davis expects settlements to be reached within the next 30 days.

Twenty-three tracts are partial right-of-way acquisition, he said, which can range from relocating a driveway to acquiring a strip of property. Of those, 20 have settled.

“You’re taking an area from my childhood, which has been a dog patch gateway into the Northand, and it will become a 21st Century parkway,” committee member Jim Rice said. “It will be beautiful and it’s a real accomplishment even though it’s taken a long time.”

A number of businesses have begun the relocation process and some are choosing not to reopen, Davis said.

“I would hope that you give first priority to relocating in either the Chouteau Crossings (Shopping Center) or the peripheral area around the Antioch Shopping Center,” Rice said. “It’s a viable location and we’ve got some significant vacancies… If we can solve two problems at once, that would be nice. It would be a way to get them out of the right-of-way and put them in a spot where they can make an improvement.”

Currently, no businesses have relocated to the area of Vivion and Chouteau, Davis said. The area is more upscale, he said, and “a lot of folks don’t think they can make a go of it.”

As tenants vacate their properties, the city’s Environmental Management Office will conduct environmental evaluations, secure the buildings and later demolish them.

To date, two environmental evaluations have been completed and four are underway, Davis said.

Underground storage tanks cause for concern

Eight properties are either current or former gas stations and contain underground fuel storage tanks, and clean-up costs could be high, Davis said.

The Environmental Management Office is moving to Phase II of the environmental evaluations of those properties and will use ground penetrating radar and drilling to determine the extent of the contamination.

“It could cost $1 million to clean up. I hope I’m high,” Davis said. “I’ve heard too many horror stories – hopefully some of them are just stories.

“Those (underground storage tanks) were too old and too unregulated for too long…

“The real test is going to be how bad and how deep (the contamination)… That is the hugest unknown here. It’s an unknown for scheduling and it’s an unknown for budget.”

Despite the environmental evaluations, Davis said construction is expected to begin by the summer of 2012 and will be completed in approximately 18 months.