If you are in Circle Pines, driving city streets has become a more enjoyable experience in the past few years. That’s because the city has completed major infrastructure improvements.
Back in 2005, Circle Pines first floated the idea of repairing every city street. It was a grandiose vision that soon turned into a ginormous project.
Now, 17 years later, every street in Circle Pines has received upgrades along with new curbs, gutters, gas lines, water and sewer mains.
“Our first street project was 2008,” said Circle Pines Mayor Dave Bartholomay. “It happened to be my street. So immediately some people were saying, ‘I can’t believe it. It’s just what I thought. The mayor’s going to do his street first.’ I’ll never forget, a person told me that and I said, ‘I have to pay a little over $4,000.’ He said, ‘you go first then. That’s just fine.’ So they all thought it was some sort of a free deal.”
“TREMENDOUS EVENT”
Residents actually paid 25 to 30 percent of the cost, which was approximately $4,900 per house. Bartholomay calls the street reconstruction project a “tremendous event.”
“It’s amazing how you fix up a street and trees and all that boulevard kind of work, all of a sudden people start fixing up their houses,” Bartholomay said. “All of a sudden they got new windows, new siding. It has a whole new look and the community just kind of comes alive.”
The city treated each street project like it was the first one.
“We learned a lot as we went through this process,” Bartholomay said. “By the end we had it running like a clock and we were kind of thinking we could maybe farm ourselves out with other communities. Kind of come in, help them fix up their streets for 10 to 15 years and move on to the next city.”
Circle Pines used professional engineers to advise the city as to what streets were priorities for the project.
