Special Section: Riverside Renaissance

Midway through the five-year program, 70 percent of the $1.68 billion Riverside Renaissance city improvement plan is either finished or under way, City Manager Brad Hudson said Thursday.

The plan condenses 30 years of projects to upgrade roads, parks and other facilities into a five-year period. Getting it all done has meant jobs for local contractors, engineers and architects, Hudson told a group of business leaders at the Mission Inn.

"This is the best stimulus program in the country. No one else is doing this," Hudson said.

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He touted completed projects such as a skate park at Bobby Bonds Park, the dredging of Lake Evans at Fairmount Park and the widening of Van Buren Boulevard and University Avenue.

Statistics on the plan are somewhat fluid, as new projects get added and costs change while work is in progress. Of the 263 projects, 143 are finished, 75 are under construction and 45 are in design or out for bid, Hudson said.

As of May, finished work represented $216.7 million of the plan, projects under construction were projected at $271.9 million, and work either in design or out for bid was expected to cost $603 million, according to the most recent city figures available.

Hudson said bids have been coming in between 20 and 40 percent lower than expected on some projects. The city is using a combination of county, state, federal and private money, and its own dollars from bonds, electric, water and sewer funds, development fees and the proceeds from the sale of land and bonds.

"There's very little general fund debt associated with this program," Hudson said. "This program will not threaten the provision of public safety of other services in the future."

The costs of the Riverside Renaissance remain a concern to Councilman Paul Davis, who said right after his election last month that he wanted to take a closer look at city spending.

Davis said Thursday that he supports the city upgrade overall, but that the city needs to do more to anticipate costs and plan projects on the front end.

On some projects, he said, officials have decided part way through to alter the plans, which results in expensive change orders.

"Unfortunately the cost of those can be very devastating," Davis said.

He said he would rather see the savings from unexpectedly low bids spent on new projects rather than added costs for existing ones.

Reach Alicia Robinson at 951-368-9461 or arobinson@PE.com