The City of Santa Barbara has completed $15 million in capital projects, has $131 million in projects under construction and another $82 million worth of projects under design.
“It’s a good thing for this community,” city engineer Brian D’Amour said.
Already this year, the city has completed renovations to the main commercial runway at the Santa Barbara Airport at a cost of $9.1 million, a project primarily funded by the Federal Aviation Administration.
“This was a key project, keeping that runway operational,” D’Amour said at Tuesday’s Santa Barbara City Council meeting.
The city has about 27 projects under construction. One of the most notable projects to the public is the city’s massive street repair effort, funded primarily by Measure C sales tax money.
The city is using slurry seal to improve the condition of its streets, at a cost of about $6 million.
“We haven’t done that in quite a number of years because we simply haven’t had the money to do preventative maintenance,” D’Amour said. “We have been in a triage mode. It is great to have a funding source to be able to do these preventative measues.”
Construction crews also stumbled onto more problems when repairing the streets. The city is required by state law to provide access ramps in areas where they are doing preventive maintenaince to the streets. Crews are also looking up and down the streets to make sure the concrete nearby is in good condition.
“There is a lot of concrete work associated with the pavement work we are doing,” D’Amour said. “That’s added a lot of additional cost to the projects than what we had anticipated.”
The city is making pedestrian improvements to the railroad crossing on State Street at a cost of $728,000, which was funded by a state grant.
One of the most significant construction projects under design is the replacement of the De la Vina bridge, near Vernon Road. It’s the latest bridge replacement project in the city, which has replaced about eight over creeks during the past 10 years.
The replacement of the De la Vina bridge will cost about $11.5 million.
Crews also plan to repair the bumpy Mission Street later in 2019.
Also underway in 2019 is the replacement of about six miles of water mains that cost about $8 million.
“There is a lot happening out there in the streets,” D’Amour said.
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.