JOHN DAY — While a floating dredge is removing sediment from the pond on the west end of the Seventh Street Sports Complex, earth-moving equipment is busy on a different project at the east end of the park.

The city of John Day is extending Northeast Seventh Avenue 360 feet to the east, to the intersection with Charolais Heights Drive. At the same time, sewer and water mains are being extended alongside the street, with stubs at the intersection.

“We decided to go ahead and stub the sewer out farther and stub the water out in case of future development,” said Casey Myers, the city’s public works director.

The Seventh Avenue extension will be paved, but the unpaved stretch of Charolais Heights that runs along the east side of the park will remain dirt for the time being.

“Right now we don’t have the funds to extend the pavement out to Northeast Charolais Heights,” Myers said. “We’ll do that at a later date.”

The work began on Oct. 3 and is expected to be finished in another week or so, according to Myers.

“We’ll have it paved before the end of October,” he said.

In a related project, improvements are being made to the small parking lot at the east end of the park, which is owned by the Grant School District. The parking lot is being paved, and sidewalks with wheelchair ramps that meet Americans with Disabilities Act specs are being installed.

High Desert Aggregate and Paving, a Redmond-based contractor hired by the city, is doing both projects. The street improvements are expected to cost $250,000 and are being paid for by an Oregon Department of Transportation grant, Myers said.

Joe Hitz of Sisul Engineering, which is doing some engineering work on the project, said the utility stubs would cost around $46,000 and would be paid for out of the city’s systems development fund. If the area is developed in the future, the city will recoup some or all of those costs through future systems development charges.

The parking lot improvements, which will come out of the city budget, are expected to cost around $114,000, Hitz said.

Grant School District Superintendent Mark Witty said the district had dedicated some right of way to the city in exchange for the parking lot work, which will make the east end of the park much more accessible to people of all abilities.

“The benefit is we get an ADA parking lot, so we get ADA access to that facility,” Witty said.