Paving contract approved, Arrow Drive lights in the works

By Randy Bell

Street paving will get underway in Clinton this month, and some extra money the City is receiving will pay for new asphalt on a playground parking lot.

The Board of Aldermen at its meeting July 5 approved an $824,686.70 bid from AJ Construction, Inc. of Madison to resurface six of Clinton’s streets and three parking lots at Traceway Park. The work on Meadow Hill Drive, Hood Drive, Gloucester Place, Navajo Circle, Pineview Drive and Baseball Alley — and Baseball-Softball Parking Lots #3 and #6 and Soccer Row Parking Lot #1 — should be completed within seventy-five days.

“It usually doesn’t take that long,” says Consulting City Engineer Bill Owen, “but we have to account for weather during those months as far as rain, when you can’t lay asphalt.”

The Board learned that the Hinds County Board of Supervisors is contributing $50,000, which the City plans to use to pave the parking lot at Kid’s Towne.

The City is also moving ahead with a project to install lights along the Arrow Drive multi-use pathway, using money that was left over from $1 million in legislative funding, which also paid for repaving Northside Drive.

“Basically, the money we have will allow us to go from Pinehaven [Drive] to the very first entrance to the high school,” Owen says. The seventy bollard lights included in the first phase of the project will be three-and-a-half- to four-feet high and spaced thirty to thirty-five feet apart to make the pathway safer for those using it.

The Board voted July 5 to advertise for bids for the project. Owen says the City hopes to get additional funding to light the rest of the pathway leading to Traceway Park.
“The anticipation is to submit an application to do the remaining one hundred forty lights.”