Looking across the completed Broadalbin Street intersection on Water Avenue on Friday evening, Sept. 19, 2025. The Linn County Courthouse is in the distance.
On a Friday evening bike ride along parts of Water Avenue, I noticed another little milestone in the long-running Albany Waterfront Project: The intersection of Water and Broadalbin Street has been rebuilt, repaved and now reopened to traffic.
On Friday night the intersection led only into the riverside parking lot east of the city’s Community Center. Water Avenue was still blocked in both directions, toward the west because it’s not quite finished and to the east because, while the concrete curbs have been poured, the repaving hasn’t started.
The city’s contractors are rebuilding the western blocks of Water Avenue as a “plaza street,” so called because it can serve as a site for festivals or markets. They hope to finish in November.
The change affects the avenue from the entrance to Monteith Riverpark eastward to just the other side of the Lyon Street Bridge, a stretch of a little more than four blocks.
One notable change is that the street is being substantially narrowed, and the western-most block, between Washington and Ferry streets, has become a one-lane street eastbound.
Another change is that the driving surface between Washington and the Ellsworth Street Bridge is being covered with reddish paving stones. (On the bike, the pavers feel a little like cobblestones.)
On Saturday, a paving contractor was putting down standard asphalt on the block between the Ellsworth and Lyon Street bridges. (See photos below.)
The design apparently follows the streetscape plan a previous city council approved in 2008. The idea then was to beautify Water Avenue. This would lessen the street’s utility for drivers trying to avoid congestion and traffic signals on First and Second, but I don’t remember anyone objecting to that.
The conversion of Water Avenue from a former industrial street to a plaza is the capstone of the Waterfront Project, which has cost roughly $21.5 million in construction, not counting the $3.1 million the city spent on the design.
As a reader of this blog, you know I’ve been keeping track of progress on the Waterfront Project ever since construction started with tree felling in February 2023. Now we can look forward to the finish in a matter of weeks. (hh)
H&H Paving, of Salem, was paving Water Avenue with asphalt between the bridges on Saturday, Sept. 20, 2025.
Looking east along the newly paved portion of Water Avenue from the Ellsworth to the Lyon Street Bridge.
22 MILLION OF REDDISH PAVING STONES…SEEMS FAIR…LETS PUT THOSE PAVING STONES IN SOME POTHOLES…..OH MY
The stupidest move the City Council (read that CARA…it’s one and the same) has ever made….spending 21.5 plus million on paving a street with fancy bricks. And that street has old warehouses along it and not much else. Read Saturday’s D-H newspaper. Growth in Oregon is over. Here is a quote from an economist asked to speak to Oregon’s business and civic leaders in the near future: “…the boom days are over. …Five major challenges the state faces: a housing shortage; lousy K-12 schools; wildfires; over-reliance on income taxes; and ambivalence about growth.”
MORE lipstick on a gigantic PIG!!! No matter what, Front St. in Albany will never be like 1st St in Corvallis…!!! No fronting shops, restaurants, bars etc… Just pavement…!!
Also, besides eliminating all but a couple of handicapped parking spaces for the front of Senior Center (Yes, “Sr. Center”…that it is what money was designated to build years ago), their original rear parking is now cut down by almost half by the huge installations that top the underground electrical for Water Street!!! (I heard years ago that the Carousel wanted the Sr. Center torn down and their building to be put on that spot. Sounds like the Carousel-loving Council got their way when they literally killed off the Sr. Center.)
Doesn’t make much sense. They deserve the senior center and they deserve the handicap parking spots. Not rear parking where they have to walk further. Damn, it’s just not right.
I was driving on First St. Monday and I heard a train whistle. I glanced toward Water Street, and there was a train headed East. Made me feel good that the train still runs on Water Street and makes its presence known on those silly pink bricks. The blasts of the train horn, in my thinking, were saying, “To hell with the brick pavers; we’re coming through.”