Beautifying Our Cities One Neighborhood At A Time

Cities and towns around the country are recognizing the value of revitalizing our urban neighborhoods which have been in decline as people moved to new housing in the suburbs. Many of our urban neighborhoods have suffered from high crime and declining housing and infrastructure as the areas have been neglected for years.

Cities in our region are involved in efforts to improve housing, rebuild streets and sidewalks, and encourage community pride. The City of Charlotte through its Neighborhood Improvement Program has identified neighborhoods where streets and utilities are being upgraded along with landscaping, neighborhood parks, and housing to offer an improved quality of life for its citizens. USI has assisted the City of Charlotte on six of these neighborhoods by planning and designing improvements to sidewalks, roadways, storm drains, and utilities including replacement of undersized water mains. Four of these projects are completely constructed and two are under construction.  In Greensboro, USI assisted the City with redeveloping the Morningside area as a Hope VI project. This project involved replacing a public housing area with new streets, utilities, landscaping, and housing to offer residents a better way of life.

These neighborhood improvement projects along with the movement to revitalize our center city areas are important to the citizens who live there as well as others. USI’s staff is proud to be a partner in rebuilding our infrastructure and understands the engineering and social issues that are involved in working with local neighborhoods.

How a Municipality can benefit from an On-Call Engineering Contract

• The process for selecting an engineering firm can be conducted annually, bi-annually, or as needed. Time spent by municipal staff is reduced because the selection process is not needed each time a project arises.
• One engineering firm can be selected to handle all projects, or several firms can be selected based upon their special services or particular strengths.
•  On-call contracts provide as-needed resources for smaller municipalities who do not have budget for full time engineering staff.
• Engineering contract is in place when projects come up.

If you think an on-call agreement might help your agency meet demands for engineering services, please contact John Fersner (336-272-3402) or Bonnie Fisher (704-342-3007) for more information.