Mayor Nancy McFarlane, Chancellor Randy Woodson and other officials announced Thursday the beginning of the second phase of a project to improve Hillsborough Street’s safety and economic growth. Other speakers included Hillsborough Street CSC Executive Director Jeff Murison and Pipeline Utilities owner David Moser.

The Hillsborough Street Renewal Project began with funding from the city of Raleigh in a 2013 capital improvement program, with phase one bringing an extra $300 million of commercial investment onto Hillsborough Street, according to Woodson. He expects the second phase to have a similar impact.

The project initiates renovations on Hillsborough Street that are expected to be completed by the fall of next year.  The project centers on Hillsborough Street’s historic impact on both Raleigh and North Carolina, according to McFarlane.

“Significant pieces of Raleigh’s history have taken place on Hillsborough Street,” McFarlane said.  “From the construction of NC State founded in 1887 to one of North Carolina’s largest peace rallies in the 1970s [protest of the Vietnam War].”

Features coming to Hillsborough Street include raised medians, marked bike lanes, street trees and a rain garden. McFarlane hopes the new features will spark economic growth in the area and provide a safer community by reducing the amount of accidents that happen on the street.

Along with increasing safety, the plan hopes to add more public art to make the area more lively and appealing.

Woodson, a guest speaker at the event, believes the second phase will benefit the region and the NC State campus community.

“The flow of traffic associated with the first phase, and what we knew that the second phase would do is provide tremendous safety to those 35,000 students that call NC State home and for the people that want to be part of the vibrant community,” Woodson said.

The construction has been contracted out to Pipeline Utilities. David Moser, the company’s owner and a guest speaker at the event, graduated from NC State with a degree in civil engineering in 1977.

“Never in my wildest dreams as I walked these streets did I envision that forty years later I would be standing here today at a groundbreaking to renovate our historic street,” Moser said.

One mission of the second phase is to remove overhead wires and add more underground utilities. Moser says this is a difficult task because the area is what he calls a “spaghetti hole,” meaning that with so many wires and underground utilities the area will be hard to dig through without removing or replacing pipes and wires.

“If anyone tells you that this Hillsborough Street project is going to be easy, they have been misled,” Moser said.  “As I have told my employees for thirty years, anybody can dig through a corn field and not tear anything up, but it takes a special team to dig through a spaghetti hole, and folks this is a spaghetti hole kind of job.”