City engineers reckon it will cost $1.75 million to make it safe for westbound planes to land at a city-owned airport and downtown drivers to park at the top of a city-owned parking deck downtown.
City council members overseeing public service projects approved both projects Monday. A full and favorable council vote is expected next week.
The first plan takes $65,000 in taxes paid by businesses that benefit from the Akron Fulton Airport and adds it to $535,000 in Ohio Department of Transportation funding available for aviation-related public works projects. Construction workers would erect warning lights 30 to 100 feet above the east end of the city-owned airport.
Akron administrators are asking roughly 25 private properties for access to chop down 75 or so trees that have grown too tall but stand outside of a city-owned clearance strip that stretches northeast from the airport to a set of baseball fields. The more trees the city takes down the fewer lights it will have to put up.
“[But] we have to get [the homeowners’] permission,” said Travis Capper, a construction manager for the city. “We don’t have any easement that allows us to go in there.”
Akron Councilman Jeff Fusco asked that any trees taken down be offset by saplings planted elsewhere.
Closer to city hall, the top floors of Akron Centre Parking Deck off W. Mill Street will reopen in November following a $1.15 million repair job.
“A lot of parking is closed off at this time,” city project engineer Randall Keirns told council Monday. “That’s why we need the repair project at this time.”
The plan is to replace the expansion joints between the decks sections on the seventh and part of the sixth floors. Repairs to busted or broken concrete and lighting would begin in June. The project has not yet been publicly bid.
Similar repairs this year for the fourth level of the Cascade Parking Deck are projected to cost $1.7 million.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug .