Overland Park will realign Marty Street and 82nd Street on Metcalf Avenue near downtown and build a pocket park nearby.

Currently, 82nd and Marty are across the street from each other on Metcalf, but they do not perfectly line up.

So, anyone crossing Metcalf from 82nd Street hoping to get to Marty on the other side has to go onto Metcalf, jaunt south about half a block and then turn right onto Marty.

After that, Marty curves toward the north near Matt Ross Community Center.

This project, expected to start this winter, seeks to address that, making a more direct crossing point from one side of Metcalf to the other, just in time for a new five-story apartment and retail building to go in at this intersection.

“This is obviously a big, important project that intersects Metcalf,” Councilmember Drew Mitrisin said at a recent Overland Park City Council Public Works Committee meeting.

Metcalf will stay open during realignment next year

Becky Bonebrake, supervisory civil engineer, told the Public Works Committee during its October meeting that work on the project is expected to begin early next year and is forecast to last into the fall.

During the construction phase, Metcalf won’t close through downtown Overland Park, but there will be some lane closures and could be other traffic interruptions.

“We will maintain traffic through Metcalf while we are doing this,” Bonebrake said. “It will be one half at a time.”

According to city documents, Marty will be realigned to match up with 82nd Street at Metcalf, cutting through the site of the now-demolished Grease Monkey auto shop at 8200 Metcalf Ave. As part of the project, some properties in the area will get new access points, sidewalks will be replaced or added where they are missing, and some driveways will be replaced.

Some utilities in the area will need to be relocated to accommodate the changes.

In addition to the actual road improvements planned, Overland Park will also build a new pocket park — a smaller public green space of sorts — near the realigned intersection.

Originally, construction was scheduled to begin in 2025, though that was delayed until next year amid other projects in the area. At the time, the city had placed was a moratorium on new construction and roadwork as much as possible in the downtown area while Clock Tower Landing was under construction.

The 82nd and Marty realignment project cost has crept up

When Overland Park first added the 82nd Street realignment project and downtown pocket park project to the capital improvements plan list in 2023, the city earmarked $3.3 million for it.

However, by the time the city approved the 2026 capital improvement plan, the cost had increased to $4.32 million.

Now, the price tag has gone up once again to $4.7 million, driven by higher-than-anticipated bids from contractors to complete the project. However, federal funding for the project has also increased, covering $1.5 million of the total cost.

Earlier this month, the Overland Park City Council unanimously approved two items related to the project as part of the consent agenda. The first item formally increased the project funding to the new cost estimate with a capital improvement plan amendment.

The next item awarded the bid to Realm Construction to complete the physical construction work for about $1.9 million.

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