AUBURN – Road crews should be busy in Auburn’s mall area this summer, wrapping up the bulk of the work building two traffic roundabouts on Turner Street before Christmas.

But crews won’t complete the details until the spring, and the work won’t include building sidewalks along Park Avenue, according city Economic Development Director Roland Miller.

On Monday, Miller updated the City Council on this summer’s mall area road work and the tax increment financing deals that are paying for them.

The city plans to open bids on the road improvements on March 15, with preliminary work beginning in April.

“The plan is to have the binder coat of asphalt down by the Christmas rush,” Miller said. “It will look finished, but won’t quite be.”

Miller said the city has worked out transfer agreements for 27 pieces of land along the way. Most of the 18 parcels are being donated to the city. Miller said he’s negotiated sales for nine other pieces. They will all come before the City Council at the March 19 meeting for eminent domain proceedings.

“Even though we have negotiated agreements on all of these, we need to do eminent domain to get clear, unclouded titles,” he said.

Plans call for installing two roundabouts along Turner Street, adding medians and traffic islands along Mount Auburn Avenue and sidewalks through the area. Crews will finish in the spring 2008, paving Turner Street and Mount Auburn Avenue and completing landscaping work around the area.

Councilors approved a $5 million bond package in August 2006 to purchase rights of way, relocate utilities and redesign and widen the roads around the Mount Auburn Avenue and Turner Street retail developments.

The city’s debt payment on those bonds will be paid with money from a tax increment financing district that includes Longhorn Steakhouse, Ruby Tuesday’s and the planned Best Buy and TGI Friday’s as well as Kohl’s.

Sidewalks out

But Miller said new sidewalks along Park Avenue won’t be paid with TIF revenue. Councilors made putting sidewalks to the new elementary school part of that TIF plan last fall. The state disagreed, however.

“They said that Park Avenue was too far removed from the retail district,” Miller said. “They asked us to remove it from the application, and we did.”

Miller said the city does not have an alternative plan to pay for a walking path to the new school yet.