Work is moving forward on the soon-to-be-built Love’s Travel Stop in Monmouth.
On Monday, aldermen approved the bid of $651,294 to Advanced Plumbing and Mechanical to constructed the extension and Woodard & Curran for the administration of the work at $144,000.
Lew Steinbrecher, the City Administrator for Monmouth, says that Love’s is funding the project.
“We have a development agreement that we entered into with Love’s a little over a year ago no,” Steinbrecher told WGIL. “In that, it says the city will design and engineer the extension of the water and the sewer and we will bid it out — hold the contract for the extension so that they are city contracts. But that, Love’s will reimburse the city as it is invoiced for those costs.”
Steinbrecher also says that while the city his handling the utility lines, Love’s is handling the road reconstruction.
“The agreement also says that Love’s will do the design and engineering to rebuild 11th Avenue and they will also award the contracts for it– they’ll do that directly. But we felt that because the water and sewer will be municipal utilities that we wanted to have control over the water and sewer. Whereas, we allowed to actually undertake the reconstruction of 11th Avenue.”
Love’s will be reimbursed for the costs of the extension of the utilities and roadwork through the implementation of a one percent special sales tax on the business district established in that area.
While the city is dealing with significant budget shortfalls due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the summary of Monday night’s meeting notes that “no city revenue is being used that could otherwise be used to alleviate the City’s current financial crisis.”
