Progress Downtown
Leader photos by Nancy Bergeron Austin Breen, left, and Rhett Mayor, right, with Wye Electric, prepare to assemble the lamp on one of the new streetlights on Park Avenue in downtown Ruston.
Larry Harris, with Wye Electric, works on wiring in the base of one of the decorative streetlights being installed on West Park Avenue.
If all goes according to plan, the block of West Park Avenue between North Trenton Street and Monroe Street should reopen next week.
“We’re getting really close,” Andrew Halbrook, Ruston’s public works utilities manager, said Tuesday.
Crews are working this week on installing decorative lighting, stripping, and installing bricks between the curb and sidewalk. The project, which has taken five months to complete, is part of the $4.8 million Phase 6 of the city’s downtown transportation revitalization program.
What’s left is one block of Phase 6 — East Mississippi Avenue between Vienna and Bonner streets — and the phase along Bonner Street from East Georgia to the Bonner Street Bridge.
That work could start next summer, Halbrook said.
When the work currently underway on the East Mississippi block is finished, all the interior downtown core blocks will be done, he said.
The multi-million revitalization program, which began under former Mayor Dan Hollingsworth, includes placing electric lines underground, upgrading sidewalks, adding decorative benches and planters to each block, and installing decorative lighting.
