CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – After being awarded a grant of $800,000, the City of Clarksville announced Thursday they can continue work on the Jordan Road sidewalk project; however, the timeline will be tight, according to Street Department Director David Smith.

Smith told the City Council that with the grant secured, they can continue the project in northwest Clarksville that the city had already spent $100,000 toward.

Smith: ‘The trouble is we have one calendar year’

Smith said the project was initiated after the 2023 tornado, and it’s been a work in progress over the last two years.

“Knowing how much was involved, we omitted the Eva Drive section of this, this is just Jordan (Road) connecting over toward Fort Campbell Boulevard … this would be a connection from the new library all the way to, believe it or not, Ringgold Elementary.”

‘Storybook trail’ installation, project phasing

Smith said the City will partner with the Kiwanis Club, as well as the public library, to create a “storybook trail.” “This is a really neat project; that being said, if it’s postponed, this will be an absolute scramble to finish in a year, because the money we were awarded will only allow us to do this work in-house. We can’t sub(contract) it out and get it done for the money that we have.”

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Smith said the project’s phases will differ from what the city has traditionally done. “Typically, we have the appraisals done, and we’re ready to go, and we know what those values are,” he said. “In this case, we own all of the right-of-way, so we already own the land necessary where the sidewalks will exist.

“What we need is to be able to slope the yards behind, so this is easement acquisition. Right now, those yards, if you guys have been out on Jordan Road, they all are ditches. They all convey stormwater; we intend to build sidewalks over that. In order to make this work, we’ve got to move those ditches behind (the sidewalks). We’ve asked the developer if there is a way to make it a little more general, … Instead of ditches behind the sidewalks, we’ll have swales or a more general conveyance of stormwater.”

Smith said the city will have a third-party negotiation team visit each property owner in the evenings to walk them through the project and its phases.

Clarksville Now has reached out to the City of Clarksville about the storybook trail.

$120,000 estimated for property acquisition

Smith said estimates show the city will pay the average price of $3,500 across 32 properties associated with the project.

“Depending on where it lands, somewhere in the $120,000 range for property acquisition,” he said. “We have money in the budget for other sidewalk projects that we’ll use to do this; we’re just going to switch the priority. Before this award, the priority was North Liberty Church and Appleton.”

Councilman Jimmy Brown asked Smith if eminent domain is the last resort in cases like this. Smith said that is correct.

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