The longtime flooding in Kent of 76th Avenue South will come to an end later this year when crews raise the road.<\/p>\n
The Kent City Council awarded the $4.4 million project on Tuesday, May 5, during a virtual meeting to Puyallup-based Northwest Cascade Inc., which had the lowest of nine bids submitted.<\/p>\n
“It’s long been a problem for the city, it’s way, way low,” City Public Works Director Tim LaPorte said to the City Council about the often-flooded road.<\/p>\n
A $2.5 million grant from the state Transportation Improvement Board will help pay for the project. The rest of the monies will come from the B&O, storm drainage and water utility funds.<\/p>\n
Work is expected to be completed this year along 76th Avenue South from South 220th Street to South 214th <\/a>Street<\/a>, LaPorte said.<\/p>\n The street often floods in the winter after heavy rain. The project will include raising the road above the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood elevation, a new three-lane roadway, curb, gutter, sidewalk, storm system, watermain system, illumination, planters, irrigation and several driveway improvements.<\/p>\n The street serves approximately 5,800 businesses employing more than 77,000, according to city documents.<\/p>\n City staff also reached an agreement last year with aerospace company Blue Origin to raise the road in exchange for the company to pay for a stormwater facility as part of its large expansion that opened in January. The council approved the agreement.<\/p>\n Teams from the city and Blue Origin worked out the details. City code would have required the company to construct half-street improvements on the western side of the road as a condition of development on the west side of the street. That street improvement would have included the requirement to raise the road about 3 feet so that it no longer floods from Mill Creek.<\/p>\n Chad Bieren, city Public Works deputy director, said last year that the cost of the city to buy industrial property for a stormwater facility would exceed the cost for the improvements to 76th Avenue South.<\/p>\n The raised section of the road will be done in concrete to help the street last longer. A high number of trucks use the road daily.<\/p>\n The city received nine bids for the project that ranged from $4.4 million to $5.3 million.<\/p>\n “Bids came in very good,” LaPorte said. “We had nine bidders which is incredible and the low bid is a half million less than the engineer’s estimate ($4.94 million).”<\/p>\n The council on Tuesday also awarded a $4.7 million project to Active Construction, Inc., to build a roundabout this summer at Fourth Avenue South and Willis Street.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Road to be raised to stop flooding <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":45819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-45818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45818"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=45818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}