Parts of Cooper’s Gully through the east side of Orange will be getting landscaped with 701 trees, shrubs, and grass.
Also, more than a dozen city streets south of Interstate 10 will be getting resurfaced soon.
The Orange City Council Tuesday awarded contracts for the two projects.
Frey’s Landscape of Orange was given the contract for the landscaping with a $42,850 for the project. Frey’s had the lowest of two bids. The second bid was for $64,200 from a Louisiana firm.
Public Works Director Jim Wolf said the city agreed to do landscaping as a condition to get a permit by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to extend a concrete lining of the gully.
Cooper’s Gully is a natural drainage stream that runs from 16th Street at Cordrey Avenue eastward to the Sabine River. The county’s only pump station is on the gully at the river by the Boat Ramp.
The city had federal hurricane recovery grants from Ike in 2008 for new pump equipment and the gully lining project. Wolf worked several years to get an environmental permit to line the gully with concrete to cut back on mowing and cleaning maintenance.
The gully landscaping will include planting the trees, shrubs, and grass, plus mulching around them.
The street project contract went to LD Construction of Beaumont with the low bid of $1.24 million. The other bid, also from a Beaumont company, was for $1.49 million.
The street improvement project is being paid through the capital improvements bonds the city sold last year. Streets north of the interstate were repaved last year, except for a section of Sikes Road east of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
Wolf told the council Sikes Road will be the first of the streets to be fixed. He said a collapsed sewer line underneath the road needed to be fixed before the street work was done. The sewer repair is finished.
Wolf told the council the city had budgeted $3.14 million for road improvements. The fund could have about $445,000 left over when current project is complete.
The council unanimously approved a 25-year lease extension for the proposed new Boardwalk Grille by Jake Lemoine. The agreement has the city leasing riverfront property to Lemoine until 2045.
He plans to build a $1 million restaurant on city-owned land along the downtown boardwalk. The lease extension was needed to help acquire a commercial loan for the project.
Lemoine has been approved for an economic development corporation grant to help pay for infrastructure like installation of utilities to the site.
In other business, the council on second and final reading agreed to reject a rate increase request by Centerpoint Energy, which provides natural gas in the city. The city will join with others to go before the Texas Public Utilities Commission on the rate increase request.
The council also gave final approval to ordinances setting making zoning rules match the Interstate Development Zoning District requirement.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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