After two years of work, the Prescott City Council is ready to move forward and make this a fruitful year for the long-proposed riverfront project.

The council discussed the project and some roadblocks at its meeting last Monday night.

The matter will be taken up again at a Parks and Public Property Committee meeting Monday, May 11 at 5:30 p.m.

The city has been working with its engineering firm, Cedar Corp., to get an accurate assessor’s plat of who owns what land along the riverfront. That’s taken some time, and there are still some challenges.

Seth Hudson of Cedar Corp. said in meetings “B.C.” (before COVID-19), the city and BNSF railroad were trying to hammer out an agreement on property lines and ownership.

“We kind of lost track with the railroad of where things are,” he said, noting that their real estate office is in Texas for the railroad, and they have no one local to look over the area.

“Their real estate group was looking over the situation to see how they wanted to move forward,” Hudson said.

Because of that, Hudson suggested that the riverfront project be done in two phases, with the first phase being from the Hwy. 10 bridge to Orange Street and then continue working with the railroad where their property and the city’s land is in question.

“We can move forward with the design on some critical areas of the downtown plan, the lighting and the courtesy dock and the sidewalks through there,” he said. “That’s the key component.”

Grant funding through the state Department of Transportation was approved for that planning.

City Administrator Jayne Brand reiterated that the city needs to get done what it can but there are challenges with the project.

“We’re going to try to do everything we can possibly do that is the city’s. We have another issue. On the end of that second piece from Orange Street heading to the east there, Pilot House, we have an issue with them. They believe that they own more property, and they won’t sign off on it right now,” she said.

Parks and Public Property Committee Chair Bailey Ruona said the intention all along had been to do the project in phases.

“I’m pretty sure we had talked about splitting this up into phases, because we knew the railroad was going to be kind of a drag on our timeline. I don’t have any problems splitting it up,” she said.

She said the coming committee meeting will be to go over a “game plan” to get the project rolling.

“We’ve been working on this two years. We need to show progress,” she said.

The complication with phase two “are tied directly to land owned by the railroad, whereby your Front Street crosses their property and their buildings are on your property,” said Hudson.

“I think we’ll have an opportunity for some trading,” he said.