The 2023 road construction season is pretty much finished, and engineers are already planning projects for next year in Fort Dodge.

Design work for 2024 projects has started, Chad Schaeffer, the city’s chief development officer, told the City Council Monday evening.

He said those upcoming projects will build on the progress made since 2008.

Since that year, 40 percent of the city’s streets have been improved by complete reconstruction, asphalt paving or extensive concrete patch work, he told the council.

He estimated that an average of $4 million a year has been spent on infrastructure for the past 15 years.

“A lot of money has been spent,” he said.

These projects are currently underway in the city:

• Construction of an office, lab and odor control facility at the wastewater treatment plant.

• Construction of a trail between Fort Dodge and Badger.

• Infrastructure work related to the Corridor Plaza development.

• Construction of pickleball courts at Schmoker Family Park on North 32nd Street.

• Construction of a skateboard park at the former Sunkissed Meadows Golf Course.

Current plans call for repaving sections of 12 streets next year.

Schaeffer told the council that he has received a draft agreement with the Union Pacific Railroad for the replacement of the bridge that carries Highland Park Avenue over the tracks. He said the city staff will be talking to railroad representatives about some changes to that agreement. A new bridge for that location is currently being designed.

Another major project currently being designed is a water main that will extend from the ag industrial park west of Fort Dodge called Iowa’s Crossroads of Global Innovation to Manson. The main will be used to supply water from Fort Dodge to Manson. Engineers had previously estimated that construction of that water main could begin next year.

Another project the council learned about Monday would spruce up a downtown alley and possibly make it a destination for special events.

The alley runs east-west behind the buildings on the north side of Central Avenue between Ninth and 12th streets.

A plan produced by Snyder and Associates, of Ankeny, for Main Street Fort Dodge, shows landscaping at each place where the alley intersects with a street, murals, lighting, parking for food trucks and a kind of hanging structure shaped like a glider suspended over part of the alley.

The project is estimated to cost $2.2 million to $2.8 million.

“At the present time, Main Street is not asking council to allocate financial resources, just staff or council time to help guide the project,” said Sharon Stroh, executive director of Main Street Fort Dodge.

The council took no action on the proposal Monday.