City in line for federal money to pave McGalliard and Tillotson in next three years

MUNCIE, Ind. — When speaking of infrastructure needs in Muncie, Mayor Dan Ridenour called them "the elephant in the room."

The elephant is now heading for the door.

Ridenour said in his recent state of the city address that McGalliard Road and Tillotson Avenue will be repaved, with the work starting this summer.

"Please share it with people, so they know," he quietly asked.

Ridenour has been confronted by citizens with the consistently miserable conditions of McGalliard Road and Tillotson Avenue in Muncie since he became mayor. It's something his administration took to the Indiana Department of Transportation, looking for, perhaps, federal dollars that could be shaken loose and find their ways to Tillotson and McGalliard.

More: Community Crossings grants fell short of funding Delaware County paving projects

It's finally happened.

Ridenour announced that federal money will be dispersed to Muncie by INDOT yearly in $4 million increments in 2024, 2025 and 2026 for the milling, repaving and remaking of the east and west running McGalliard and the north-south avenue of Tillotson.

Ridenour said the work will start on McGalliard, between Tillotson and Wheeling, sometime after the money is expected to become available in July.

He said work on Tillotson will begin next year after a project by electric utility AEP buries a power line under the street for about a mile connecting a substation along Tillotson to a substation north of the Ball State University campus. AEP will then repair and pave that portion of Tillotson this year, with the city's project for Tillotson taking over in 2025.

What is arguably the worst part of the two streets that are to be remade, McGalliard near the Muncie Bypass, will be saved for the third year, Ridenour told The Star Press. He said that part of McGalliard was discovered to be in worse condition than first thought and reengineering of the work will need to take place before the project there can take place in 2026.

More: Muncie gets $1 million match from state to pave streets this year

The mayor said the work on the roads will include milling and be similar to how Wheeling Avenue was redone during the previous Tyler administration.

In 2020, his first year in office, Ridenour said he began talking to INDOT officials about the need to fix McGalliard and Tillotson but the streets were not in the state's plan for repairs until 2027.

Ridenour said he asked if there was any other way the city could get help for the expensive work sooner and was told by INDOT that sometimes cities lose their projects because they don't have the matching money available or the engineering ready when it comes their turn.

Though the mayor said he doesn't know who lost their INDOT project or why, Ridenour said, Muncie will benefit.

He said his administration kept its 20% match in reserve and the engineering was prepared in case INDOT could move the federal transportation money its way.

Ridenour laid out plans for an ambitious 2024 at his state of the city address, delivered at Cornerstone Center for the Arts. The mayor examined planned advances of the city in four areas: infrastructure, public safety, quality of place and quality of life.

The mayor said that by infrastructure, he primarily means local roads, and he reflected on his decision two years ago to buy paving equipment so the street department could do some of its own paving rather than relying on contractors to do everything.

"It proved to be very successful," Ridenour said of the city's own road work. "The first year we paved three or four roads and quite frankly we weren't very good at it."

More: Muncie gets $1 million match from state to pave streets this year

But the paving work has improved as the city's street department gained experience, he said. In 2023, the city paved three miles of neighborhood streets. This year the city is planning to pave 5.5 miles of streets with it's own crew, while using contractors to handle repaving thoroughfares.

Last year, he said, the city bought a "crack sealer machine," a "spray patching machine" and the city started its own concrete crew in the street department.

After naming the other streets in line for repair in 2024 the mayor brought up what he called "the elephant in the room — McGalliard and Tillotson,

"Here's the deal," Ridenour said. "It's up to about $13.5 million to do those two streets."

The budget for the street department in Muncie is about $4 million to $5 million annually.

"So we'd have to close down, do nothing for two or three years, if we were to do McGalliard and Tillotson without help." Ridenour said.

In addition to planned work on Tillotson and McGalliard, Ridenour said this year's paving should benefit from expected state Community Crossings grant money.

More: Riverside work that grew from trail project to include street and drainage redo finished

The grant paving work plan includes Ninth Street between Walnut and Madison streets, Madison Street north of Heekin Park, the north-bound lanes of Wheeling Avenue, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Granville Avenue, Meeker Avenue from Memorial Drive to 29th Street and Burlington Drive.

Also in the plan is work on Eighth Street, where the city plans to create a road diet or a reduction in travel lanes in order to slow traffic.

The mayor said the changes to Eighth Street are intended to make the street safer for children in that neighborhood. The work will take place on a stretch of street next to a brownfield where a General Motors transmission plant stood through most of the 20th Century.

In his speech, Ridenour referred to plans for a solar development on the 53-acre brownfield. An effort to place a solar development across the entire site died with a city council vote in 2022. But officials have discussed the possibility of reviving the project by developing solar in smaller stages at the site.

Other streets in line for paving work in 2024 include Godman, Ethel, Vine, High, Highland, West Canterbury Drive, Pershing, Rosewood, Elsie, Catalpa, Amherst, Woodway Drive at West Jackson Street and White River Boulevard.

David Penticuff is a reporter with The Star Press. He can be contacted at dpenticuff@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: City gets $12 million from state and feds to fix McGalliard, Tillotson