Nevada Central Business District Infrastructure Improvements

Located in central Iowa, Nevada is the second-most populous city in Story County and the county seat. Nevada’s Central Business District’s (CBD) aging infrastructure was plagued with deteriorated pavements, undersized storm sewers, undersized and failing water mains, leaking sanitary sewers, and poorly lit streets. It had long been recognized that the poor condition of the downtown infrastructure was a significant deterrent to returning the City’s core commercial area to a viable and attractive shopping center and gathering place. The City established the need for improvements in the area many years ago, but it finally had the funding in place to take action.

The City contracted with HR Green to develop a conceptual design for a comprehensive storefront-to-storefront reconstruction of 10 blocks within the CBD. This comprehensive project approach allowed for infrastructure improvements while also improving the aesthetics and pedestrian accessibility and safety. New water, sanitary, and storm sewer service stubs were provided by the City and installed into each building.

A new storm sewer and roadway subdrain were also installed to facilitate subsurface drainage and prevent groundwater from backing up into the adjacent building basements. In addition, the dedicated services improved building and roadway drainage by replacing outdated and undersized infrastructure. The surface roadway, parking, and sidewalk improvements included bump-outs at the intersections through the CBD corridor. These bump-outs provided increased pedestrian safety at the crossings and allowed for ADA-compliant sidewalk ramps to improve pedestrian accessibility to the merchant storefronts. The revised intersection layout and bump-outs also provided an opportunity for streetscaping and an area for vendors and
merchants during downtown events.

The roadway cross-section was revised to facilitate drainage within the street and on-street parking areas and to replace sidewalk to meet current PROWAG and ADA design requirements. Lighting improvements included directional cut-off LEDs for increased energy efficiency and street and sidewalk illumination.

HR Green was responsible for all aspects of the Nevada Central Business District project from site analysis, construction schedules, cost estimates, preliminary designs, final plans and specifications, bid letting documents, pre-bid meeting, and construction administration, with the City providing construction observation services.