The city of Vicksburg has received an additional $534,000 in Federal Transportation Alternative funds for additional work on improvements to the Levee Street area.

Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said the money will go toward improving the street’s sidewalks, developing parking for the depot museum in the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad Depot, and other improvements to Levee Street.

“This has been a long time coming,” he said. “We were able to convince the (Central District) Transportation Commissioner Dick Hall and others how important this was to the city, and it speaks once again to our relationship with state government works. This has been on the burner for a while, and because of funding challenges they (MDOT) delayed it.”

Improvements to Levee Street are part of the plans to improve Vicksburg’s riverfront are to make it more appealing to tourists and residents.

One proposed design by New Orleans architects Eskew-Dumez-Ripple, which is doing the project design, envisions building two parks called east and west on either side of the depot with a bus stop and bus parking area.

A second option is turning the riverfront into a batture area of trees and vegetation. The area on the east side of Levee Street in either design option would be transformed into a natural amphitheater to take advantage of the sloping terrain from Washington Street. The proposed amphitheater would also remove some parking along Levee Street.

One major change under the plan is restricting or eliminating truck traffic along Levee Street, which is presently the major route for 18-wheel trucks moving from Interstate 20 and the Port of Vicksburg on Haining Road.