CLARKSVILLE – Clarksville City Council is taking action to start the eminent estate process on a small property along Riverside Drive with the ability to invoke the process with others in the event sales agreements cannot be reached in time to keep federal funds attached to the project.
At its regular Tuesday meeting, council voted unanimously to approve a resolution that would allow council to seek prominent area for the acquisition of right-of-way on properties along the causeway, with improvements expected to begin. in 2023. The resolution covers about 11 properties, and Clarksville City Manager Kevin Baity said a buyer hired by an outside engineering firm had approached all of them.
Some have already accepted the price determined by evaluations made last summer, and others are still in negotiations. But Baity said negotiations are “at an impasse” with a landowner, Clarks Landing Investments, LLC, which owns about 25 feet of undeveloped land along the causeway.
The council also voted to start the process in court of eminent domain on this land, but this could still lead to negotiations between the city and the landowner.
Funding for the acquisition of properties includes federal funds of $ 2.3 million; the city is responsible for the remaining $ 400,000. Construction of the project – which includes road widening and center line straightening, sidewalks, on-street parking and completion of the Ohio River Greenway from the east end of Ashland Park on Riverside Drive to the Jeffersonville border near the Clark Memorial Bridge – is just under $ 4 million, 50-50 funding.
The project is linked to plans set out in the South Clarksville Redevelopment Plan, which includes work underway to reconstruct the former Woerner Avenue (now Main Street) into a central downtown. Bolt + Tie, a mixed-use office and residential space, was the first to physically invest in the new Main Street, but Denton-Floyd recently announced plans to build there over the coming year. .
The city also approved a grid of streets in the area surrounding Main Street, bordered by Riverside Drive, Ashland Park and the Ohio River.
For more information on Riverside Drive upgrades, go to www.townofclarksville.com/project/indot-project-riverside-drive/
