Work may begin this summer on the next phase of improvements along the Chadakoin River.

The city has been looking into and working on ways to bring in more activity to the Chadakoin River Basin, in the form of the Chadakoin Basin Activation project, and Jason Kulaszewski, city principal planner, brought phase one of this project to the planning commission for introduction last month and review and approval at the most recent February meeting.

The first phase of the project focuses on the southern basin, the area near the park behind the National Comedy Center and the Board of Public Utilities on Steele Street. Kulaszewski said a steering committee has been formed to help develop the project and they are beginning to move into the next phase for permitting and approvals.

“We are hoping to be able to get the project out to bid and start construction this summer,” Kulaszewski said.

Mike Gridley with C&S Companies, who is the project manager, called into the meeting to talk with the commission on the project. C&S has been working on the project with the city for about a year, with the idea to create activation for the entire basin area of the Chadakoin River, both the North and South basins.

“What we did was we started out and looked at a bunch of programmed elements that the city was interested in pursuing,” Gridley said. “There were a bunch of things that had come through previous planning studies, elements that the city wanted to explore and so we did a lot of research into that, looked at precedents.”

Gridley said there was a lot of looking at the site itself, surveying, visual inspection, photographing, and researching environmental and other aspects. Through this work the steering committee came up with a master plan for the vision for the whole basin area, which Gridley briefly went over for the commission. He added a cost estimating exercise was done for the cost to do everything they wanted, and following that they established priorities based on time and money, which is how phase one became focused on the South Basin.

The latest set of plans to focus on includes an access point, which Gridley said already exists through the BPU facility off of Steele Street, and there will be an enhanced pedestrian access point to get to the site. There will also be a parking area, kiosk, ramp, kayak launch and small handicapped area parking space that is connected to the kayak launch area and the dock. There is also associated landscaping and lighting and other aspects like that.

Gridley added a lot of coordination has been done with the BPU for these plans as it is their area.

“And basically what we arrived at is as long as we stay to the east of their driveway and don’t impact that at all, and also don’t impact the ability of that parking area as a place for them to store snow in the winter time, we have their blessing,” Gridley said.

Other project aspects in the park area include removing the existing dock structure, which has already been done, some demolition on existing gravel paths which will be improved on with a more solid surface, and rebuilding the deck substructure and superstructure.

Gridley went over some hardscaping improvements for this area of the project, such as gates, signage, a kiosk, parking enhancements, creating a launch ramp as an access point to the basin, and a second ADA accessible area for kayak launch. Gridley then went over the design concept for renovating the existing dock, which has slightly changed from the plans presented to the commission last month, and surveys that were done of the basin.

“Right now and it’s not ideal but we’re going to make it work, our PO Tech is out there, ATL, exploring the areas that we’re going to be working in,” Gridley said. “Because we added that … dock area kind of late in the game, it’s kind of pushed that process back a little bit but we are getting findings from that in those areas too so the foundation for that will be something that will have geotech recommendations to support.”

There is an existing electrical line and the BPU has provided recommendations on how to modify that and make it flow better with the site plans. The BPU will be helping with some of the other improvements involved with the project too.

Gridley also presented the planning commission with some planned structure renderings, lighting plans, the pedestrian gateway on Steele Street, and signage of different kinds along the river walk including some on the city’s history. Discussion from the commission focused on staffing for the kayak launch, which Kulaszewski said they are not going to have right now with phase one of the project, safety aspects in the area that are planned for, water depth and how that affects the which water crafts will be chosen to be launched in the South Basin, studies done on that, river navigability, and a few other aspects of the project. Following planning commission discussion and a few other questions, the commission reviewed and approved the SEQR and site plan approval for the Chadakoin Basin Activation Project Phase One.