Officials from the City of Hattiesburg are working to make it easier for motorists to find their way around and park downtown with a Downtown Wayfinding & Parking Signage Project that would place directional signage throughout the designated downtown area.
The project, which was approved at a recent Hattiesburg City Council meeting, is aimed at beautifying downtown with decorative improvements, with stop signs and wayfinding signs for navigation.
“(This way) people can find where some publicly available parking is, that may not be as obvious as some other parking is,” City Engineer Lamar Rutland said. “We’re just trying to promote more people to come downtown and make it easier for people to get around.
“It’s city-funded, and we’ve been working with the Downtown Association because it’s one of their really big requests they’ve had over the past couple of years. So we just found a way to make it happen.”
The project is now open to bids, which will be received at Hattiesburg City Hall until 10 a.m. July 23. The chosen bidder will supply all labor, equipment and materials as specified necessary for construction of the project.
Bids also can be submitted at www.hattiesburgmsbids.com and must include a document representing the cover of the envelope containing the necessary information.
“We have to receive the bids, and if the bids are favorable, we will award the project and move forward with construction and go from there,” Rutland said. “So you’re talking two to three months to bid the project. We’re probably four or five months away before you see any work, if that, depending on how long it takes them to fabricate the items and that type of thing.”
The project will focus on the entire downtown area and is not limited to any one section of that designation.
“This is downtown Hattiesburg, so the goal would be to take in what is considered downtown and the boundary of it,” Rutland said. “For the most part, we would beautify a bunch of those in that area itself. So it’s not one particular intersection there; it is downtown itself.”
