After several years of discussion and work, upgrades to a half-mile stretch of East High Street are complete.
The project, which cost $2.68 million, included replacing curbs, sidewalks, sewer system, stormwater system and the street service.
There was also work completed on some driveways and retaining walls along the sidewalk.
Tia Griffin, design engineer for Jefferson City, said the work took 16 months to complete, but discussions about the project started in 2003.
"The sidewalks, where they did exist, were somewhere between 2-3 feet wide on average," she said. "Walls were falling over onto the sidewalk. The sewer and stormwater were put in, I think, around the 1950s. We couldn't really keep patching it."
The project was jointly funded by Jefferson City and Cole County through each entity's half-cent sales tax, with $638,000 coming from the sewer utility fund.
Griffin said the proximity to East Elementary School was something of a focus for the project.
The work started near Park Place Neighborhood Park and connects to Riverside Drive, which goes into Ellis-Porter Riverside Park.
Installing sidewalks on both sides of the road and repositioning the crosswalk outside the school were important aspects of the project. The crosswalk, Griffin said, was positioned slightly down the hill, which meant drivers from the other side couldn't see whether students were crossing in it. Now, it's at the crest of the hill where pedestrians are visible from both sides.
Since construction started in February 2020, the project took longer than planned for Aplex Inc, the construction company in charge of the project, worked around limited material supplies.
"When that hit, things shut down, and we just did what we could in the meantime," Griffin said.