City Hopes to Give South Street a Makeover

ZANESVILLE, Ohio — City Council held their bi-weekly meeting at Town Hall this evening.

Among the items on the agenda was an ordinance passed providing the city authorization to apply for a grant that would greatly improve the north side of South St. in downtown Zanesville.

“Tonight council waived the readings and passed an ordinance that allows us to move forward with applying for an ODOT grant. It’ll be for South St. in the north side and it’s a ‘streetscape’ improvement. So it will be similar to what’s done through the rest of downtown and we’re just adding one more street then into the project as far as completing it to make it look beautiful,” said City Council President Daniel Vincent.

Vincent adds that the project in total will cost $447,700, but the city would only be responsible for 5% of that cost — $22,385. And while the project will not take place until next year, they are beginning to get the process underway right now.

Zanesville Mayor Jeff Tilton also spoke and petitioned for a number of leaders to step forward and take charge on the ‘Kid Z-ville Park’ Project.

“We have a lot of volunteers that have come forth to work on the project. What we need really quickly is three, four people to step-up to be leaders to kind of take over areas of the project and actually work with the design team, which is coming from California, to have meetings with them weeks before the projects so that we have everything in place when we get ready to build and try to build this in 5 days,” explained Tilton.

The project’s build dates are currently scheduled for May 3rd-7th. The project is in danger of being pushed back a few months, to several months, if no leaders come forward. Tilton says that the park is currently treated lumber that has “lived its life,” and they are ready to update it with plastic and a more modern look. Mayor Tilton also adds that the ideal leaders would be individuals that have some sort of engineering, construction, and/or design background.

The next council meeting will be held on Monday, March 27th at 7pm.