After an action of Statesboro City Council last week, the city will continue working with the Georgia Department of Transportation on bridges and walkways for the Creek on the Blue Mile project.

But City Manager Charles Penny announced that the city will break from the engineering and design firm Freese and Nichols — with which the city has spent more than $2 million on preliminary work toward this project over the last five years — and advertise for a new engineering team. Since federal funding has become involved through the Georgia DOT, requirements for the federal process added to the design work, and Freese and Nichols and their subcontractors initially asked for about $4 million more, Penny said.

The related item on the agenda for the council's Dec. 3 meeting was a "project framework agreement" between the city and the Georgia Department of Transportation.

The Creek on the Blue Mile wasn't originally a GDOT project, but a locally conceived vision, combining flood control, economic development and recreational aims, that received state support. Under a previous governor in 2018, the city received a $15.5 million Georgia Environmental Finance Authority line of credit and $5.5 million in direct state funding for the project.

After initial plans for a reservoir that could have doubled as a recreational lake were abandoned, the engineers' cost range estimate of $44.6 million to $72.4 million for the public infrastructure was reduced to roughly $28 million, which is about where it remains.

In April 2023 Georgia Speaker of the House Jon Burns announced a $2.65 million state grant for the trail along Little Lotts Creek, plus $6 million in Georgia DOT funding to rebuild bridges.

That spring, in a letter to GDOT District Engineer Troy Pittman, Statesboro city Public Works and Engineering Director John Washington stated that the GDOT had committed "bridge construction funds only in the amount of $6 million" and $500,000 for utility relocation work. This letter was labeled a "request for local let" for the city to complete the design of floodway improvements and the trail or promenade, originally from South College Street to South Zetterower Avenue.

3 'bridges'

As developed since then, the proposal involves changes or replacement to three bridge or culvert structures: One on the "Blue Mile" of South Main Street, a part of U.S. Highway 301, where city officials and Blue Mile Foundation members said earlier this year the bridge will have to remain at-grade, not raised higher, so that the promenade will begin there but not pass under the bridge; at Fair Road, a part of Georgia Route 67, where the bridge will be rebuilt higher so that the tiered walkway can pass under it; and at Zetterower Avenue, where Penny said the box culvert structure would be replaced.

In a letter dated Sept. 24, 2024, signed by state Transportation Commissioner Russell R. McMurry to Statesboro Mayor Jonathan McCollar, the GDOT committed to pay for bridge and culvert work even if it exceeds the previously mentioned $6.5 million. The letter also stated that the department will help fund "the preliminary engineering phase" within a limit.

"GDOT acknowledged that construction costs have increased since this project was programmed, and GDOT will fully fund the bridge and culvert work, less any aesthetic costs," McMurry's letter stated. "The design and construction funding are federally funded, and the City must follow the federal process to ensure project eligibility."

The resolution that City Council approved last week, with a 5-0 vote on a motion by Councilmember John Riggs, authorized the mayor to sign the project framework agreement and any related documents required by the GDOT. It also states: "The City Manager recommends partnering with Georgia Department of Transportation to design the bridges and Little Lotts Creek trail projects and to receive funding for these projects."

City cost concerns

However, in his remarks to the mayor and council, Penny acknowledged continued concerns about the costs, saying he had talked to Councilmember Shari Barr the day before.

"The city still has an opportunity to make a final decision on your commitment to the Creek on the Blue Mile," Penny said. "At this point, you're not so locked in that if for some reason you decided you didn't want to go forward. But we're not there yet. We still need to finish the design project."

Then he added that he wanted to inform the mayor and council, and make a public announcement, of another consideration that was not on the agenda, but which he intends to bring forward at the next council meeting.

Change of engineers

"We are recommending that we end that relationship with Freese and Nichols as the primary consultant, and part of it has to do with us getting into this process," Penny said. "The cost escalated because of the requirements of the federal grant, and so we were looking at possibly an additional $4 million to have that relationship with Freese and Nichols and all of the subs, and at that point, that's a bit much to just increase their contract."

The higher planning costs, he said, result from the need to comply with a process called PDP in order to qualify for the federal funding. In response to a follow-up question from the Statesboro Herald, Assistant City Manager Jason Boyles in an email Monday identified this "PDP" as the GDOT's Plan Development Process, and supplied a detailed guidebook.

City staff members intend to send out a "request for qualifications," or RFQ, and obtain price estimates from other consulting engineers, "and hopefully it will come in somewhere a lot less that $4 million," Penny had said.

More information may be presented during the Dec. 17 meeting, but the RFQ process will take time, so the new firm would be selected in January or later, he said.

"Freese and Nichols has been a good firm to work with," Penny told the mayor and council. "They did our feasibility study. They've been doing the design work, helping us with the flood plain issue, and they've agreed to work with us through that transition. It's nothing bad about them. It's just that because we just couldn't agree on what that cost was going to be."

Discussions with Freese and Nichols had identified ways to reduce the added cost to about $3.7 million, but this was not enough to bring it within the city's expectations and available state funding, he said in a follow-up interview.

In September 2019 the council awarded Freese and Nichols an $832,000 contract to do a feasibility study for the Creek on the Blue Mile. In April 2021, the council agreed to pay the firm $65,000 for an additional hydrology study of the floodplain in the project area.

In March 2021, the council approved paying Freese and Nichols, assisted by EMC Engineering Services, up to $2.65 million to complete the planning and design work.

With the design remaining incomplete, the city still has about $1 million of that amount left, with the engineering and design group having been paid about $1.6 million, Penny said Monday.