Demolition starting on Grant Road widening project

The $17 million project will widen Grant between Stone and Park avenues to six lanes and will create indirect left turns at Stone Avenue and First Avenue. An earlier phase widened and added indirect left turns at Oracle Road.

Here are three things you need to know.

1Demolition was set to begin Wednesday.

Five houses and two businesses will be torn down to make room for a wider Grant Road, said engineering project manager Beth Abramovitz. A lot of the landscaping will stay intact, she said.

A second round later this month will take six more commercial buildings.

The demolitions are happening now, but the roadway construction won’t begin until later this year.

2The city is working with a historic neighborhood on a mini-salvage project.

Because some of the houses to be torn down are contributors to the Jefferson Park neighborhood’s historic status designation, the city is photographing the buildings and showing the pictures to people in the neighborhood who might want to salvage items, Abramovitz said.

That’s something new the city is doing, she said.

Increasingly the city and developers are recognizing it’s a good ethic to work with neighborhoods in this way, City Councilwoman Karin Uhlich said.

“It’s a good way of honoring the people and the place that’s going to be changing,” she said.

Jefferson Park Neighborhood Association president Joan Daniels said residents were hoping to see old oak flooring or built-ins, but no luck.

“They’re still historic, but they don’t have that wood craftsmanship,” she said.

Jefferson Park homes are a mix of Craftsman bungalows, Spanish Colonials, Territorial-style houses and post-WWII houses with carports off the kitchens.

The city and RTA will pay for the neighborhood to redraw its historic-designation boundary so it doesn’t lose historic status with the loss of those homes.

3The project will include a drainage basin that will look like a park.

The existing intersection at Grant and Park can see more than a foot of water during a typical monsoon storm, Abramovitz said.

The new basin will help eliminate flooding, she said, but it will also create a park-like area with a walking path, desert plants, and a spot next to Sausage Deli where people could “grab a sandwich and go sit outside with some shade.”