City of Brownsville receives grant for street improvements

BROWNSVILLE, Tenn — The city of Brownsville will have new improvements on the way in the coming months. More than half a million dollars was awarded to the city of from TDOT.
The funding will allow city officials to make some changes to their downtown area.

Mayor Rawls said, “This will be a project going from East Main to the square. From Jackson Ave. all the way down to Park Ave.”

The city has been working to get the grant before Mayor Rawls took office back in July of 2014.

“This is awesome. It’s all part of an overall plan we have for the city of Brownsville infrastructure projects of course a community of our size needs to get it done through grants,” Rawls said.

Although 80 percent of funding will come from the state, Brownsville will need to contribute an additional 20 percent to start the improvements.

“We’re right around $950,000 for the total budget. The grant award was $715,000 the rest will be matching funds from the city of Brownsville,” said Mayor Rawls.

The funding is supposed to help make the city more ‘pedestrian-friendly’. “It’s about 1,900 feet of linear sidewalk, underground utilities, and pedestrian lighting, antique pedestrian lighting that’s consistent with our lighting on the square,” said Rawls.

Because there is no paving in the project, Mayor Rawls said there will not be any blocks in the roads. Traffic will have to be re-routed once it gets underway.

“This will also give it a clean look when you come up under the underpass into the downtown area, you’ll be looking right at the courthouse and there won’t be any overhead utilities or anything of that nature,” said Mayor Rawls.

The mayor said he hopes to have the project completed between spring and early summer of 2017.