_{Thumbnail photo: Public Works Director Dave Yeager showed Crescent City councilors the proposed concept for a revitalized 3rd Street last week. | Image courtesy of the City of Crescent City}

The day before Don Arambula presented the revitalization of 3rd and K streets as catalyst projects for the Downtown Specific Plan, Crescent City’s public works director unveiled a plan to pursue grant dollars to help pay for those improvements.

Up to $5 million in Community Development Block Grant dollars expect to be available this fall, Yeager told the City Council on July 6. To be competitive, the city needs to prepare design work associated with those catalyst projects as well as its storm drain masterplan by the time the Notice of Funding Availability drops, he said.

“We did the survey work up front,” Yeager said. “What we’re asking from you this evening is to approve this task order, which is $100,000, so we can finish the design.”

Councilman Steve Shamblin was absent. Among the items discussed at Monday’s Crescent City Council meeting:

Cultural Center project: City Manager Eric Wier assured councilors that Harley Munger, of Piece by Piece Pottery, has already provided replacements for the tile mosaic murals that had graced the wall in front of the Crescent City Cultural Center.

“They had all of the original designs,” Wier said during a presentation marking the start of a project to improve ADA access to the Cultural Center. “They have refired all of those tile pieces. We have the murals and so it’s just a matter of figuring out where exactly they go in this new design. Most likely they’ll go on the inside of the porte-cochere as that gets revamped. That’s going to be a space that needs to have some art and culture and different things like that.”

The project involves replacing 24 steps that had led to the facility with eight steps and two ramps leading to an entrance plaza from Play and Front streets.