Workers will break ground Monday on the first phase of a hotly debated plan to revamp Montrose Boulevard from Allen Parkway to West Clay Street.
The final roadmap retains the original intent to include an expansive new underground drainage system, but many other aspects of the redesign shifted after months of back-and-forth protests and incoming Mayor John Whitmire’s total overhaul of the leadership of Montrose’s Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone.
The reconstruction, planned by the Montrose TIRZ and Gauge Engineering, will be completed by MC2 Civil LLC for just under $17.9 million. The contractor is expected to take until mid-2026 to finish its work. In the meantime, the TIRZ has promised that at least two lanes of the thoroughfare will be open at all times, one for cars going in each direction.
“The Montrose TIRZ is committed to minimizing disruptions and keeping the community informed,” said Matt Brollier, chairman of the Montrose TIRZ.
The TIRZ board holds public meetings on the third Monday of every month. Many of these meetings have been filled for over a year with familiar faces either advocating to preserve Montrose Boulevard’s lane width and existing trees, or pushing for the original redesign plan, which would have increased pedestrian and bicycle accessibility while planting more trees than the number tapped for removal from both sides of the road.
See here, here, here, here, and here for the background. You know where I stand on this, so I’ll just shrug and move on, as there’s not much else to be done on this front. I’m a little surprised that the DOGEbags didn’t try to claw back the funds for it. Let’s hope this is better than we think and that the disruption is minimal. Good luck, y’all.
I saw a news story about bike riders protesting the removal of ‘armadillo’ bike lane demarcation devices on Heights Boulevard. The only reason for doing this that I can think of is so the road can be easily restriped to eliminate the bike lane. Will this City Council ever stand up to this awful Mayor to stop this kind of backwards progress?