(From Press Release – City of Davis) – The City of Davis announced today that its Third Street renovation project was selected by The Sacramento Chapter of APWA for the Project of the Year award in the Transportation – Streetscape Category. The award was presented at a ceremony on August 2 at the Dante Club in Sacramento, and the City of Davis was recognized by Richard Liptak of AWPA at the Davis City Council meeting on Sept. 10.
The APWA Sacramento Chapter Awards Program recognizes public works projects that demonstrate excellent management, administration, design, sustainability, construction and community relations. They also recognized the strong alliance among the City of Davis Public Works team and the engineering design firm, contractor and construction management team who worked together to complete this project.
The primary project objectives met include creating the concept of the “complete street” – a street that is comfortable, safe and usable for bikes, pedestrians and cars, beautifying the street to create a sense of place including adding decorative pavers, street lights and undergrounding utilities, establishing a City/UC Davis gateway, and improving storm water drainage to reduce localized flooding accomplished by using pervious pavers that accommodate water flow.
The Davis Needle, a new art piece on the thoroughfare, is an obelisk constructed of bike parts that illuminates at night. In addition to the new sculpture, an electronic bike counter was installed that registers the number of bikes in real-time that traverse the street each day.
The Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) granted the City $3,292,000 to partly fund this project.
“We are proud that the City’s Third Street Gateway project has been recognized as a Project of Year in our region,” said Lucas Frerichs, Davis City Councilmember and board vice chair, SACOG. “The project creates a new social hub for our community and a vibrant connection point from downtown Davis to the University that really enhances our town and gown relationship.”
I didn’t realize APWA ranked awards by giving more points for the longer it takes to complete a project..
But seriously . . . really nice project, really nice corridor to campus, cool art. Good job.
( . . . but d*mn, it did take awhile!)