The state of State: Urban Renewal is complete

The Urban Renewal Project on State (and Front and a portion of Oak) is all but finished. It began on Aug. 5, 2013, with the arrival of piles of gravel and backhoes digging the first trenches. August and September 2013 and 2014, and the full summer of 2014, saw extensive traffic interruptions as Crestline Construction and subcontract crews literally tore up the street.

The routine detours, the piles of gravel, the dust, the heavy machinery parked in the road, the blocked driveways, the closed crosswalks, all a thing of the past — except for one final stretch: completion of the restroom at Third Street, set for completion in February.

And, for weather reasons, most of the landscaping will have to wait for the spring. But new ornamental pears went in during fall 2014.

You can still see the minor details left unfinished — a patch of concrete here, a bit of railing left unpainted there, the odd piece of pipe left behind.

But the major changes are, well, major:

The streetscape is greatly changed in front of the two church buildings along the project: at Riverside Church, at Third, you can now walk down the 102-year-old front steps to the safety of a new sidewalk, rather than over the curb and into the street, and at the (former) Asbury Church building at Sixth, a concrete retaining wall and railings replace the deteriorating rock wall and weed-choked drainage ditch, outdated features that were less than picturesque.