April 2017 | Business View Magazine

68 69 Bedford, Texas be moving into this new development will have access to all of those other activities and facili- ties,” Griffin adds. “We talked last year about the big highway construction project that took four and a half years to complete and that was a major im- provement for our area,” the Mayor continues. “And we had a main thoroughfare to the north that we were going to be working on, and we’re making great progress on that, but we had to wait until the highway stuff was completed. We’re working with the North Central Texas Council of Governments to help fund that along with the county and city.We’re going to do that entire stretch of road from our east end to our west end. It’s called Harwood Road, and one of the exciting things about it is that we’re reshap- ing it and redesigning it with more green space, more crosswalks, more walkability, and more bike paths. The road cuts through numerous business communities as well as residential ar- eas all along its path, so it’s going to have some very unique concepts; where it’s a business area, it will have one design to it, and as it gets to the residential, it will have a different kind of design. And it will connect to the Boys Ranch Park, as well.” Regarding another infrastructure project, Griffin reports that Bedford is one of the first cities in Texas to receive a SWIFT (The State Water Infrastructure Fund of Texas) grant. “The state voted to allocate $2 billion to do water infrastructure improvements around the state, and we applied for that grant,” he explains. “We have a $90 million grant to work on improving all of our water infra- structure – renewing and replacing all of our underground piping, some of which is over fifty years old.We have a number of projects completed and more on the books.” “One of the key things we’re doing is a water conservation component,” he adds. “We’re converting all of the City of Bedford to an automated meter