DOWNTOWN KIOSK HITS SOME SNAGS

One thing visitors to Riverfest won't find this weekend is an informational kiosk.

For more than eight years, boosters of Cape Girardeau tourism have worked to place the small structure with maps and tourist information on the northwest corner of Broadway and Water streets. The structure is ready to be assembled, but plans for its installation have hit a few snags: It stands in the way of the lift-station forced-main project, a sewer improvement planned to run down Water Street.

Mary Miller, director of the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau, which paid $3,000 for the kiosk, said it would be silly to install it now and have to remove it in a few months to make way for the construction.

The city could put the project out to bid in as little as two months, said John Bennett, an engineer with Sverdrup Civil Inc., a consultant on the project. That depends on how well the city's acquisition of right of way goes, he said.

But the project won't start right after that anyway. Charles Hutson, president of the Cape Girardeau Redevelopment Corp., asked the city to delay construction of the sewer line until after the Christmas season.

Hutson said at a meeting of the Downtown Special Business District Advisory Commission Wednesday that construction would interfere with special holiday functions at businesses on the riverfront.

Kent Bratton, city planner, said the city would comply with his request. Bennett said that this would mean construction of the project wouldn't begin until the spring.

Although the sewer project will take well over a year to complete, the portion of it near the planned kiosk could be completed just a few weeks after construction begins.

The project will extend from Main Street and Sloan Creek on the north to the sewage treatment plant on the south, Bennett said. The project will replace a sewer main that is too small and four pumping stations that aren't powerful enough to serve the new main.

Because of the size and kind of sewer main, using the trenchless technology contractors are using may not be financially feasible, Bennet said. If they have to dig up the whole street using conventional technology, that would keep the kiosk from going up for a while.

How quickly construction of the section along the riverfront downtown proceeds depends on the river level, because that effects the groundwater at the site, Bennett said.