Wright City leaders are reviewing qualifications of three engineering firms who have applied to craft plans for extensive street and stormwater improvements in the city’s downtown area.

Bartlett & West, Cochran Engineering, and Lewis-Bade responded to the city’s request for engineer proposals, according to City Administrator Jim Schuchmann. One of those firms will be selected to take the lead on a comprehensive plan to rebuild downtown-area infrastructure, part of a larger revitalization effort in that area.

A three-person panel, composed of Mayor Michelle Heiliger and Aldermen Don Andrews and Karey Owens, are reviewing the engineering proposals and scoring them based on qualifications.

Heiliger told The Record that each panel member is using a standardized scoring system to evaluate the firms. Criteria can include each firm’s experience in similar projects, how much knowledge they have of the project area, and how much work they put into understanding the specific needs of the downtown area.

Once the engineering firms have been scored, Heiliger said she would like to have representatives of each firm come before the board of aldermen and present their services. That will likely happen around mid-March, Heiliger said.

Aldermen will then select a firm they would like to contract with for the engineering project.

“The reason we’re doing this now is there is a very large sum of infrastructure money out there, that when it’s released will probably be in the form of grant funding,” Heiliger said. “Any time you apply for a grant for a project like this, the first thing they ask is ‘Do you have engineering completed,’ because engineering identifies the cost.

“We know this is one of our biggest opportunities for improvements, so we want to leverage some of this infrastructure money to make that happen,” she added.

Who scores the engineers?

During selection of the three people tasked with reviewing the engineering firms, Board of Aldermen President Ramiz Hakim recommended having only elected officials do the scoring. He referenced slight dissatisfaction with a previous engineering selection for a project at Stracks Church Road, which had a scoring panel of Hakim, then-Mayor Dan Rowden, and City Administrator Jim Schuchmann.

“Last time, when we took the scores from just elected officials, and then the scores from elected officials with city (administrator), it changed the order of which engineer rated higher than the other,” Hakim said. “I’m a big proponent of giving those kinds of responsibilities to elected officials, as opposed to city staff. It’s nothing personal, it’s just the way that I feel.”

The rest of the board and Heiliger agreed with the recommendation. However, Heiliger and Owens both requested that Schuchmann play a role in advising and answering questions from the panel. Schuchmann’s background is in construction and property development.

The downtown engineering plans will encompass street and storm drainage projects in an area that stretches about seven blocks from east to west in the historic center of Wright City.

Those infrastructure needs have been a source of complaints and frustration from downtown business owners, who would like to see the area revitalized to become a more active part of the city.