The City of Tacoma is poised to accept seven grants totaling approximately $13 million to help pay for a range of public works projects throughout the city.
In October, the Puget Sound Regional Council announced it would direct approximately $5 million in grant funds to help the City pay for five key projects: approximately $1.8 million for the Historic Water Ditch Trail; approximately $1.1 million for the Schuster Parkway Promenade; $850,000 for pedestrian street improvements in the Hilltop and South Downtown neighborhoods; $750,000 for a project at South 48th Street and Tacoma Mall Boulevard; and $420,000 for the second phase of a project involving traffic model updates, mode choices, and pavement management integration (see “Key Tacoma, Pierce County transportation projects awarded regional grants,” Tacoma Daily Index, Oct. 30, 2014).
Also in October, the Puget Sound Regional Council announced it would direct approximately $2 million to the City as part of a nearly $4 million overall project between the City of Tacoma and the City of University Place to help pay for the first phase of road improvements near 56th Street and Cirque Drive (see “Key Tacoma, Pierce County transportation projects awarded regional grants,” Tacoma Daily Index, Oct. 30, 2014).
Additionally, City of Tacoma officials announced last month the Transportation Improvement Board awarded a grant totaling nearly $6 million to the City to help pay for improvements to a stretch of Port of Tacoma Road between East 11th Street and Marshall Avenue.
The City will need to provide approximately $2 million in matching funds in order to accept these grants.
Tacoma City Council is scheduled to vote on a resolution to accept the grant funding and provide the matching funds during a public meeting at 5 p.m. on Tues., Jan. 13, at Tacoma City Hall, located at 747 Market St., in downtown Tacoma. Copies of the resolution and staff memo are available online here and here, respectively.
Here is a closer look at the projects, grant funding, and matching funds:
Todd Matthews is editor of the Tacoma Daily Index, an award-winning journalist, and author of A Reporter At Large: A decade of Tacoma interviews, feature articles, and photographs. His journalism is collected online at wahmee.com.
