Eudora ? Church Street would get a $6 million overhaul, under a plan designed to keep up with Eudora’s surging growth.

The project would add lanes, widen a bridge and install the city’s first traffic signals along Church, the route that tethers a city split by Kansas Highway 10. To the north is the original townsite; to the south is a growing area that already is home to a new $16 million high school and could soon welcome a new elementary school and dozens of new homes.

Tammi Soileau has been watching it all as crossing guard at Church and 23rd streets, standing sentry as students, faculty and staff pour out of Eudora High School’s 500-space parking lot.

“It takes 30 minutes or more to empty it out,” said Soileau, who has lived north of K-10 for three years. “If the high school keeps growing, they’ll need a light here, at least. It’s inevitable. Eudora’s growing.”

The $6 million concept — a cost that includes construction costs, plus estimates for land acquisition and other expenses — won support this week from the Eudora City Council. But city officials know that accepting $15,000 worth of consulting engineers’ recommendations was the easy part.

Now they have to find the money.

“We don’t have one penny in one account that’s been designated for this type of project,” said Mike Yanez, city administrator. “Obviously, we’re going to seek the maximum level of participation … to make this project happen.”

Yanez intends to request financing from the Kansas Department of Transportation and Douglas County Commission, with formal requests to be filed during the next few months. City officials do not intend to set a timeline for construction until they know their financial options.

Growth pressures are driving the need for the project, Yanez said. The city issued more than 100 building permits for new homes last year, and hundreds more are on the way.

Eudora’s population is about 5,000.

The project calls for reconstruction of the two-lane road between 12th and 28th streets. A sidewalk would be added, a bike path would be built on the west side of the street and traffic signals would be installed on the bridge at both ramps of the K-10 interchange and at the street’s intersections with 14th and 28th streets.

Church would be widened to three lanes from 12th to the K-10 interchange, to five lanes at the interchange, and to four lanes from the interchange to 28th.