Forrest Aldrich has been helping to engineer projects within the City of Stuart for a number of years, but his newest endeavor might be his biggest undertaking yet.

Aldrich and his engineering firm Veenstra & Kimm were recently selected by Stuart’s City Council to be the project manager for the town’s downtown facade improvement project, which comes as a result of being selected by the Iowa Economic Development Authority for a $500,000 revitalization block grant back in September.

Though it is very early in the process for the facade project, Aldrich says he is excited to get started on something he believes could be a major help to the city.

“I’m very excited about this (project) because this will be more involved with the public.  A lot of projects that we do for the City are kind of unseen, they’re buried projects or a lot of projects that people don’t really notice in their day-to-day life.  But the downtown facade project will be something that is very noticeable, so very much looking forward to that type of project that the public and the business owners will see everyday.”

The City of Stuart would like to see construction for the project begin next summer, but Aldrich says he has not yet come up with a ballpark timeframe for when these facade upgrades could be seen.

Veenstra and Kimm will sign a formal contract with the City prior to its December Council meeting, at which point the facade project process will begin to take shape.