While it was a light day on the decision-making end, the River Falls City Council heard two presentations at the June 10 meeting. Main Street may be entering a new chapter, as the historic road is also facing challenges due to the historic utilities below.

Assistant Director of Community Development Emily Shively and City Engineer Todd Nickleski presented the Main Street Corridor Plan’s preliminary analysis and preparation. The item was designated to follow the Focus River Falls plans, which included updates to the Comprehensive, Outdoor Recreation and Bicycle and Pedestrian plans.

“Main Street has always been a significant priority,” Shively said. “But those plans needed to be completed before a focused planning effort in this area could commence.”

After a series of road studies and research on land use, the city came up with a few concepts for the future of the Main Street area. Shively said staff will continue to evaluate a stronger connection between Division and Union or a larger block without a bisecting road along with other design decisions.

“This project overview, this is the big swing,” Nickleski said. “We figure it makes sense to take the big swing and scale down the project accordingly to match funding opportunities.”

“The big swing” would span from Division to Cascade, featuring Main Street, Second Street, the 100 blocks, the 100 block alley and the riverwalk, altering sanitary sewer, watermain, electric utility, storm sewer, roadway and traffic signals.

With the sanitary sewer being over 80 years old and the water main being over 120 years old, Nickleski outlined their futures. The sanitary sewer may be re-lined in portions where it is possible, but some segments will need to be replaced entirely. The current watermain is undersized and many shut off valves no longer function.

“It is really impressive when you think about there’s this watermain that is this old and it still works,” Nickleski said. “But we are starting to see some failures.”

Under the full project if nothing is removed, full reconstruction would be chopped into three phases. Phase one would be Second and Division streets, intersection improvements and side streets, phase two would be underground electric and new pavement in the 100 block alleys and riverwalk and phase three would be Main Street.

The next steps are a Safe Streets For All grant application in June, council’s review of the Downtown Reconstruction CIP project over the summer, a fall development grant application and another Safe Streets grant application in June 2026. After being awarded grants, a more certain design and timeline will show.

Nickleski said if construction starts in 2030, a ballpark construction cost with about a 25% margin for error would be in the upper 20s in millions if nothing is cut from the project. Specific funding decisions, trade-offs and potential assessments will be looked at down the line.

The police department has had some equipment concerns recently, including age of equipment, performance, battery life, VHF frequency and interoperability. Some of these concerns also carry over to the fire department, getting in the way of effective communication.

A request is currently in for 48 Motorola APX 8000 portable radios, which are handheld and equipped on the body (28 for police and 20 for fire), eight Motorola APX 8500 mobile radios which go into vehicles and seven Motorola APX Consolette and Deskset Controllers which serves as a base station. With St. Croix and Pierce counties upgrading their communication systems, the department saw a window to follow suit.

Deputy Chief Matthew Kennett said EMS is under Allina Health’s frequency, so the department has to work through Allina’s dispatch to communicate.

“We can’t communicate with them,” Kennett said. “If we need an ETA update, we actually have to ask Pierce County for an update from Allina.”

Kennett said this change could fix the issue, but it is not a guarantee.

A quote of $480,000 was presented to council to come out of the general fund and approved.

The board also approved the discontinuance of a portion of a right-of-way at East Charlotte Street.