The Post Falls Urban Renewal Agency has awarded Spokane Valley-based concrete contractor Cameron-Reilly LLC a $2 million contract for the district’s Spokane Street Revitalization Project in the central north-south corridor of the city.

Work on the project started earlier this month and is expected to be completed in the fall, a Cameron-Reilly press release says.

The project consists of constructing traffic-calming street improvements and removing and reconstructing sidewalks on both sides of the arterial between Interstate 90 and the Spokane River, a distance of roughly seven city blocks, plans on the Post Falls Urban Renewal Agency’s website show.

Spokane Street has up to five lanes in a four-block section between the freeway interchange and Third Avenue. 

When the project is completed, the affected area of Spokane Street will have five lanes in the two blocks between the interchange and Railroad Avenue, four lanes in the one-block section between Railroad and Third, and three lanes south of Third, plans say.

The northbound lane that will be eliminated between Second and Railroad will be converted to space for parallel parking, the plans say. 

A spur of the Centennial Trail will run along the sidewalk adjacent to the southbound lane within a portion of the project area.

The project also includes landscaping, irrigation, and lighting.

Landscaped median islands will be installed in six locations to help slow traffic, plans say.

Minor traffic revisions are expected during the course of the project.

Welch Comer & Associates Inc., a Coeur d’Alene engineering firm, designed the project.

The Post Falls Urban Renewal Agency works with the city government to expand and improve public facilities using tax-increment financing through which taxes derived from rising property values within the urban renewal district are used to reimburse development costs for such projects.

Separately, Cameron-Reilly also recently was awarded a $400,000 contract by the city of Spokane for the city’s 2014 Community Development Sidewalk Project.

The project involves removing deteriorating and outdated curbs and sidewalks and replacing them with Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant curbs and sidewalks throughout the city.

That contract is scheduled to be completed in the fall.