LEWISTON — Building a Lincoln Street entrance to Simard/Payne Memorial Park, walkways along the city’s canals, better signs and shoreline improvements along the Androscoggin River should get started right away, City Administrator Ed Barrett said Tuesday night.

“We would really like to get started and keep the initiative going,” he  said. “There has been a lot of excitement in the community and people were very involved in the Riverfront Island Master Plan. I think we need to start showing people progress on it.”

Barrett told councilors that those projects, the first recommendations from the city’s Riverfront Island Master Plan study, could begin this summer.

Councilors would have to vote to pay for the work at their Dec. 18 meeting.

“We would like to finish the engineering and planning work over the winter and then get started working on it this summer,” Barrett said.

The master plan, written by Boston-based consulting firm Goody Clancy, was completed in April after months of public hearings. It shows how the city could re-energize Lewiston’s Riverfront Island, the area between the river and the canals, from Island Point to Cedar Street. It includes the Bates Mill complex, as well as Simard/Payne Memorial Park, the Franco-American Heritage Center and Museum L-A.

It calls for a Lewiston Riverwalk between Cedar Street and Lown Peace Bridge to Island Point, mirroring the path in Auburn. It also calls for a tree-lined walking path all along the city’s canal system and expanded uses in the area, including more market-rate housing units, more office jobs and restaurants.

Councilors in May agreed to begin planning for several of the short-term projects, including signs, walking paths and a canal walk.

Barrett said Tuesday that the city has $720,000 left of the $900,000 federal grant that paid for the master plan and that money must be used on physical projects — building something or purchasing property.

“We were limited to spending 20 percent on planning and design purposes, and that’s what we used to do the master plan,” Barrett said. “As a result, that money needs to be used on real stuff. None of it can be used on soft costs, like project design or engineering.”

The construction work would probably use all of the money remaining from the grant, he said. The planning needed to get ready for spring construction would cost the city about $136,000. He’ll tell councilors where the city could find that money at the Dec. 18 meeting.

“I ask you to reallocate some existing money to cover the project design, engineering costs and contract monitoring costs associated with it,” he said.

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