Crystal Falls road work likely to be put on hold
LEANDER — A project that would have repaved portions of Crystal Falls Boulevard will likely be shelved at Thursday’s City Council meeting.
City staff will recommend putting the project — which would have added about an inch and a half of new asphalt to the road from Bagdad Road to Lakeline Boulevard — on hold after finding it would be a much pricier venture than expected, City Manager Kent Cagle said.
The city received two bids for the work at $189,969 and $208,054.
“They came in so high, we just decided we’re going to have to put it off for some time,” Cagle said. “Crystal Falls is actually in decent shape, it just looks bad.”
Cagle said the city had asked around for informal quotes for the project that put the work at a lower price than the actual bids that came back.
“It was well over what we expected,” Cagle said.
He said the city has seen that happen on multiple projects. “You’re seeing that on all construction projects — prices are going up,” he said.
The repaving wasn’t as high a priority as improvements to the County Glen neighborhood and CR 179, which both came in over budget, Cagle said.
The County Glen project, which will rehabilitate roads in the neighborhood, was budgeted at $1.43 million, but ended up costing almost $1.9 million, Cagle said.
The CR 179 project, which will widen the road, was budgeted at $3.44 million but came in at $3.89 million, he said.
Construction should begin on those projects soon, and the city has other important projects on the horizon, including work on the Crystal Falls and U.S. 183 intersection and the Lakeline Boulevard extension, he said.
But the repaving of Crystal Falls will still probably happen within the next couple of years, Cagle said, when the need is greater and construction in the area has slowed.
“We’ll just try again next year or the next,” he said. “The need will be greater a couple years from now and we’ll probably have a longerlasting product without the construction in the area. It’s not a critical need at this point.”