10:00 PM PST on Monday, January 11, 2010

By ALICIA ROBINSON
The Press-Enterprise

The estimated cost of the Riverside Renaissance has dropped to $1.57 billion from $1.68 billion, and some projects likely will get designed but not built before the city’s five-year public-works initiative wraps up in 2011.

Some of the cost reductions are due to low construction bids and some are due to the uncertainty of federal, state and local funding sources, Riverside City Manager Brad Hudson said Monday.

Hudson will update the City Council on the Renaissance at a meeting tonight.

More than three years into the initiative, the list of projects has grown and been subject to “probably thousands of changes,” he said.

Hudson told a group of business leaders in July it included 263 projects, of which 143 were done. A report he prepared for today’s meeting showed 303 projects around the city, with 185 of them complete. The rest are under construction, in design or out to bid. Some additions were things the council wanted to see, Hudson said.

Other projects officials expected to include may not get beyond the design phase for now.

A major revamping of the downtown library, metropolitan museum and municipal auditorium may have to wait for a bond issue that voters would need to approve. Railroad grade separations on Tyler Street and Riverside and Streeter avenues likely won’t be funded soon.

A project to add capacity to the city’s electrical grid may be delayed by a lengthy environmental review, and an expansion of the downtown convention center may be held over because “the funding is precarious right now,” Hudson said.

Anticipated funding from most sources, such as municipal debt and the city’s electric and water funds, is close to projections, according to Hudson’s report. It lists about $40.5 million as still needed, though Hudson said some will come from redevelopment bonds the city already has on hand.

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