One of Franklin’s original downtown streets that leads past homes and to unique local shops will get a long-needed makeover, but in the end will be restored to its original brick appearance.
Five blocks of Yandes Street, from Ohio Street to the north to Jefferson Street to the south, will be redone, to make it appear as it did when the street was first built. The bricks that can be salvaged with be refurbished and used in intersections. If not enough bricks can be salvaged for the entire street, replica bricks that match will be used to fill in between the intersection, Mayor Steve Barnett said.
Along the way, workers will improve the drainage underneath the street and install new sidewalks and curbs.
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The street intersects with Jefferson Street on the east side of the downtown shopping district, next to Salvage Sisters Antique Market and Thanks for the Thyme.
Madison Street, from Yandes Street to Depot Street, will also be redone using brick.
The federal government is giving the city $1,788,540 for the project. Franklin taxpayers will chip in $447,160 from city funds for the $2.2 million project. The city funds can come from the rainy day fund, tax-increment financing district funds, or a combination of both, Barnett said.
The federal money is coming to Franklin through the Metropolitan Planning Organization, which plans transportation projects paid for with federal funds in eight central Indiana counties. Cities that are part of the organization submit annual requests for projects but are competing for limited dollars. For this project, the federal funds through the Metropolitan Planning Organization is paying for 80 percent of the project.
Construction will begin in 2023.
Residents had asked Barnett to have Yandes Street restored, rather than the original bricks removed and replaced with asphalt, the mayor said. The rest of Yandes Street was not approved for work or restoration because it had been recently paved. When he was appointed mayor, one of the first emails he received was from residents concerned that the city would remove the bricks and pave the street.
The work has long been needed, and portions of Yandes Street have been patched with asphalt during the years. In other areas, the bricks have cracked.
“It’s always a very competitive process, but Franklin’s projects rose to the top,” Metropolitan Planning Organization Executive Director Anna Gremling said in a news release. “Building and maintaining infrastructure is one of local governments’ biggest challenges, but also critical to the regional and state economies.”
Yandes is the only brick street remaining in the city, and city leaders are committed to preserving it, Franklin wrote in its grant application. The project will upgrade storm drainage along the street, which should reduce flooding.
Federal law requires urbanized areas with a population of 50,000 or more to have a metropolitan planning group and for communities to go through its planning process to get federal grants for transit, transportation alternatives and roadway improvements, the organization said. The Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization includes 31 cities and towns in central Indiana.
