JOHN DAY — Bidding is set to begin for repairs to a flood-damaged portion of Southwest Fourth Avenue after the city obtained grant funding to cover the project.

Damage to the road occurred during spring flooding of Canyon Creek in 2019. Since then, a section of the road just west of the creek has been restricted to one lane. The COVID-19 pandemic, funding disagreements between the city of John Day and Grant County as well as multiple design iterations have delayed work on the project.

The original plan relied on a $1.2 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fix the damage. FEMA was set to cover 75 percent of the cost of the repairs with a 25 percent match required. John Day City Manager Nick Green says the project is now 100% grant-funded, and the latest design will cost less than previously estimated.

The project will be put up for bidding in May. The cost of the repairs is slated to be $1.1 million, although Green stresses that number is a projection. “We won’t have an actual cost until we get bids back,” he said.

John Day engineering firm Sistul Engineering is in charge of design plans for the project.

Green says the project will take roughly three months to complete once construction starts; those seeking to travel to the airport will need to take an alternate route until the repair work is completed.

In a May 2021 interview, John Day Mayor Ron Lundbom called the repairs an “extraordinary situation” that the city could not budget for.

Lundbom described Fourth Avenue as a “critical access route to the Grant County Regional Airport and other emergency services” in that same 2021 interview.