CHAMPAIGN – The Champaign Park District is working on a project to remodel Parkland Way with amenities for cyclists and pedestrians while also modernizing the road itself.
The park district board will consider approving a nearly $500,000 contract with Clark Dietz for preliminary engineering services on the project at its 5:30 p.m. meeting Wednesday.
“Over the past 40 years, numerous efforts have been made to review and evaluate the reconstruction of Parkland Way to bring it up to current City of Champaign standards and improve safety,” Park District Executive Director Sarah Sandquist wrote in a report to the board. “The most recent engineering study was completed in 2005, but no significant action was taken after that.”
She told the News-Gazette that the reconstruction project would probably not begin for three to five years.
The proposed $498,970 contract says the district wants to improve “multimodal facilities” along Parkland Way from Perimeter Road to Mattis Avenue, create connections to existing trails in the area and bring the road up to the city’s “collector street standard.”
Improvements are expected to include a 31-foot-wide roadway, a sidewalk on one side of the street and a shared path on the other.
According to Sandquist, the park district had already signed a contract with the Champaign County Regional Planning Commission in September 2023 to conduct a traffic study for the road, with Parkland College covering half the cost.
The study found that about 1,700 vehicles use the roads every day, reaching speeds of up to 60 miles per hour, even though 20 miles per hour is the maximum speed limit.
“To date, there have been no fatalities or major incidents on the road,” Sandquist wrote. “The cost estimate was $6.6 million, but staff believe this figure is too low and a comprehensive engineering study is needed to provide a true cost estimate.”
She told The News-Gazette that it will be helpful to get a better idea of project costs as the park district continues to talk with potential partners such as Parkland College, the city of Champaign, the Illinois Department of Transportation and the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District.
The proposed contract with Clark Dietz states that park officials also expect to use both state and federal funds to complete the project.
U.S. Representative Nikki Budzinski (D-Springfield) proposed in June 2024 to provide $1 million in federal funding for the project.
The congresswoman’s office later informed the park district that it had secured $500,000 for the project in an appropriations bill and that the House Appropriations Committee had approved it.
Legislative Director Yusuf Nekzad told Sandquist he does not expect the bill to pass “before the end of this calendar year.”
The district expects to receive the funds in 2024 and use them to repay the cost of Clark Dietz’s contract, Sandquist said.
The district is also hoping for a grant from the Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program, which could provide up to $3 million to fund the project’s multi-use trail.
IDOT has expressed support for the project, although it initially expressed some concerns that a shared-use path along Mattis Avenue would require coordination with the railroad, Sandquist said.
Rita Morocoima-Black of the regional planning commission later announced at a joint meeting that IDOT had received approval to include the trail in its project to replace the Norfolk Southern railroad crossing on Mattis Avenue north of Hedge Road in fiscal year 2025.
The history of Parkland Way goes back about 50 years.
Officials from the park district and Parkland College originally agreed in the mid-1970s to build the road and share construction costs, Sandquist said.
She added that there have been several attempts since then to transfer ownership of the street to the city of Champaign, but the city is not currently interested in taking it over. The college also has no interest, although representatives from both agencies expressed support for the reconstruction project.
