After being paused for several years due to COVID-19, the city of Wadsworth has begun discussing moving forward with the Downtown Infrastructure Project again this year. The idea of this project originated from the need to replace aging waterlines, storm sewers, and many more utilities in downtown Wadsworth. In addition to that, the project would focus on many different facilitation improvements and designs as citizens were able to vote for in 2017.

Starting with a vote on many different design options, citizens got to have an opinion on the matter and chose the designs. As a result of the vote, the city of Wadsworth then began to work on a plan to put into action and hired consultants to help. The original plan consisted of construction starting in 2021, but because of the pandemic, the plan was paused for several years.

“The project still needs to be done, because there is a need to replace the underground infrastructure,” said Robert Patrick, the director of Public Service. “It’s been about three years since we completed the conceptual plans, and so over the last three years, we’ve been really held up with the pandemic. We have been talking in council about moving forward with it the last couple of years, but we haven’t been able to reach a consensus and move forward.”

As it has been several years since the plan was first made, consultants will once again have to go back through the process of making sure their plan can still move forward or correcting anything that needs to be changed.

“We put money in the budget this year to have a consultant come in and look at the plan and then re-educate everyone, open it back up to discussions, and then see if everyone is on board for moving forward or if any changes need to be made,” Patrick said.“It’ll probably be sometime this summer that we get started with that again. We’ll get the consultant that did the plan four years ago, and we’ll start talking about it again.”