City Commissioners listen during their regular meeting Tuesday night at City Hall, E. 6 Sixth St.

City Commissioners approved an updated agreement that will tweak the work for key stormwater projects near downtown Lawrence and opted to not make changes to the project timeline ahead of the World Cup.

The commission voted unanimously to execute a change order of around $4.8 million to Kissick Construction Co. Inc. for the work on the Jayhawk Watershed Middle Reach Project — a project to replace storm sewers in central Lawrence that are over a century old.

Nick Hoyt, a project manager with the city, told the commission the original cost of the contract for the work was about $17.3 million, but as work began on the project crews discovered a crack inside of a storm sewer tunnel that runs beneath the Lawrence Outdoor Aquatic Center. The city discovered halfway through the project that the tunnel passed under the pool, and Hoyt believes that tunnel previously may have been overlooked by workers during a renovation of the pool in the 1990s.

The new change order, which brings the overall budget of this part of the project to $22.1 million, will go for two key changes. The first is rerouting the storm sewer tunnel through Watson Park beneath the basketball court so it no longer runs beneath the pool and installing a new tunnel to the corner of Ninth and Mississippi Streets. That change would ensure that the renovations to the pool, which were previously pushed back to be finished before summer 2027, as the Journal-World reported, would remain on its new phased schedule.

The second change will add a new tunnel to the corner of Ninth and Mississippi Streets to make it easier to connect for future stretches of storm waterwork. Hoyt said the city was mostly focused on the middle reach, but after the city and the University of Kansas made an agreement that meant the university would fund about $14.5 million worth of funds from a special tax district created for the Gateway District project, the “upper reach” of the project can be funded too. With the addition of that tunnel, Hoyt said it would tie the tunnel into the future tunnel, which means there will be no large closure to Ninth Street in the future.

Along with the commissioners’ approval of the change order, the city has now finalized the work schedule for closures along Ninth Street. As the Journal-World reported, commissioners had the option to keep the street closed between Indiana Street and Louisiana Street until July 2026 or temporarily reopen that stretch in April 2026 due to the World Cup and leave it open through December 2026, before closing it again until April 2027.

Hoyt told the commission that local businesses had a general vote against having the option that included multiple closures, and the contractor said it would likely cost about $400,000 more to the project by reopening it briefly.

Because commissioners did not speak in favor of the second closure, Hoyt said the city will continue with the current timeline which will keep Ninth Street closed until July 2026.