The city of Hillsboro has been awarded a $628,057 grant through the Kansas Department of Transportation for the construction of an 8-foot-wide lighted sidewalk from Main Street to Hillsboro Community Hospital.
The entire project is estimated to cost $785,072 with the city supplying $157,014 as a local match.
City Administrator Larry Paine said he received word Thursday that the city had been selected for the funding, which comes through KDOT’s Transportation Awareness Program.
“It looks as if they have awarded the entire project,” Paine said. “It’s going to be a nice project for the community.”
The sidewalk would follow rail bed, starting at Main Street and heading east to Industrial Road, where the sidewalk would turn north to the hospital’s new location at the intersection with U.S. Highway 56.
“The part of it that is crazy is they were taking applications for a two-year process,” Paine said about the KDOT program. “So it looks like we got full funding basically for the summer of 2019 construction.
“For me, the big picture is that for as many walkers as we’ve got in this community, it’s going to create a nice place for people to walk and have some comfort relating to safety—as opposed to walking down the middle of the street in the middle of the night, which they do.”
The Hillsboro City Council approved at its June 20 meeting a resolution declaring the city’s eligibility to apply for the KDOT grant.