Saturday Morning Emerald City News Roundup

The Ogden River Restoration Project goes full speed ahead; and there's grousing about a special assessment from a Friend of Matt

1) Scott Schwebke reports in the Standard-Examiner Digital Edition that the there's some apparent progress with respect to the Ogden River Restoration Project. The city administration has selected a general contractor, and everyone seems to be raring to go:

OGDEN -- The city is poised to award a $1.4 million contract next week to a Willard company for the first phase of the Ogden River Restoration project, slated to begin later this month.The contract will be finalized within the next several days, Justin Anderson, the city's engineer, said Friday.Ormond Construction was the low bidder for the project and selected over four other firms, he said. Company officials could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Schwebke mentions one of the reasons that construction work will commence at the beginning of the winter season:

One reason restoration work will start this month is because the river's natural flow is at its lowest ebb during winter months, [city engineer] Anderson said.

And here's perhaps an even more important reason. As regular WCF readers will recall, Ogden City scored a $1 million state Water Quality Board (federal stimulus) grant in June of this year, subject to this express condition:

In order to collect funds, the city will have to have construction under way or a construction contract signed by mid-December for the restoration river project, [Assistant Director for the State Division of Water Quality Ann] Lamb said.

During our last discussion of this topic, we also identified yet another hurdle standing in the way of the funding of this state-administered federal grant, namely the failure of the administration to have obtained easements from a number of property owners along the river. This was also a condition precedent to the payment of the federal funding, as we recall.

According to this morning's story, the obtaining of the necessary easements is a contingency which yet remains unfulfilled:

The city has obtained more than a dozen riparian easements for the first phase of the project, most of which belong to Ogden Riverfront Development, a company that has ties to California businessman Gadi Leshem, Anderson said.
Negotiations are under way with other property owners for easements involving three parcels, he said.

(An oddly abbreviated version of this story also appears in the SE Online Live! Edition, which entirely neglects to mention the yet unperfected easements, btw.)

From the tone of web version of the story, a casual reader could easily conclude that the project is "practically a done deal."

We'll see, won't we?

2) Also from the Digital Edition, we'll shine the spotlight on this Scott Schwebke story, which suggests that some business owners on the periphery of Ogden City's Central Business Improvement District believe they're being "gouged" by Ogden City, with respect to a special assessment designed to promote Ogden City events:

Dan McEntee, owner of Bingham's Cyclery and Peloton Cafe located withing the district at 1895 Washington Blvd. said he supports Downtown Ogden Inc.'s events and promotional activities.
However, he said he believes all businesses in the city should share in the costs and benefits from the assessment.
"Everything (sponsored by Downtown Ogden Inc.) seems to be relegated to the 25th Street area," he said. "That's good, but if we are going to do something, we should promote all of Ogden."

Bingham's Cylery is a Friend of Matt, of course.

Anyone wanna lay odds on whether Mr. McEntee will get some relief in this matter?

That's it for now... who will be the first to comment?