P’ville’s Manville Road Streetscape, Civic Space Projects on Hold
Earlier this year, the Village of Pleasantville was poised to start construction of the long-planned Manville Road Corridor Improvement Project.
But then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the project, for the most part, has been put on hold along with the proposed creation of a civic space on the north end of Memorial Plaza, which would have started after the completion of the Manville Road improvements.
Village officials acknowledged the uncertain economic impacts and spiraling construction prices caused by the health crisis are the reasons for the delay.
“The local economic factor here is that our revenues will be severely impacted,” said Village Administrator Eric Morrissey. “We are going into some uncertain times and we need to have as much capital and liquidity as possible.”
The Manville Road project, first conceived more than 12 years ago, was awarded a $1.5 million federal grant through the New York State Department of Transportation (DOT) since it’s a state road. The total expected cost of the project is about $3.5 million.
The project includes removal of the Memorial Plaza slip lane leading out to Manville Road and replacement of it with a right-turn lane, a new traffic light and new crosswalks. The plan was to go out to bid with construction to have started in the spring.
In July 2019, the Village Board approved a $2.6 million bond resolution so it could borrow up to that amount if needed. The resolution was required by the DOT as part of the review process for the grant. If the project requires more money than that, a supplemental bond resolution would need to be passed.
Currently, the chances of the village approving a bond are remote.
“Putting a bond out while property owners might be seeing their salaries reduced or being laid off is the other reality,” Morrissey said. “And the board may not want to go to bond with the shortfall on revenues.”
Village revenues from usually-reliable sources such as sales tax, meters, permits, recreation programs and summer camp are expected to be severely impacted because of COVID-19.
There is a Dec. 31 deadline for submitting the required grant information to the DOT. The village is moving ahead with completing all the necessary information required for the DOT, including the bid package, project drawings and specifications and materials to be used.
Escalating construction costs is the other problem. At a board meeting last December, Richard Williams, senior principal engineer for Insite Engineering in Carmel, the village’s engineering consulting firm for the project, warned the board to expect higher bids for work on the project because of radical price escalations in the construction market. Inflated costs were being seen in other local public municipal projects. Low interest rates have provided governments incentive to initiate more capital and infrastructure projects resulting in a labor shortage.
“We were hearing from other municipal projects that were 15 to 20 percent over budget,” Morrissey said. “We were prepared for high construction prices pre-pandemic. Now the question is what will be the impact the virus is having on construction pricing?”
The second component of the Manville Road project was to replace the slip lane with a civic space/pocket park with benches and trees to be built a year after the corridor improvement project was completed. That is also on hold.
“The intent now is to get all approvals we need and see where we are at the end of the year,” Morrissey said. “The board has to determine whether the Manville Road project is financially feasible at that point. Of course, we can pivot quickly within the fiscal year to take on those projects if and when we have a real understanding of the pandemic’s full negative impacts.”
Abby is a local journalist who has reported on breaking news for more than 20 years. She currently covers community issues in The Examiner as a full-time reporter and has written for the paper since its inception in 2007. Read more from Abby’s editor-author bio here. Read Abbys’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/ab-lub2019/