One of Napa’s worst major roads will get a total makeover, complete with sidewalks, later this year.

The city will spend $2.4 million to turn East Avenue into a smooth ribbon of asphalt, with continuous sidewalks on the east side for students walking to and from Alta Heights Elementary School.

“It will basically look like a brand new road,” said Public Works Director Jacques LaRochelle, who expects the work to begin this summer.

East Avenue is the major artery through Alta Heights, running almost a mile from Silverado Trail north of Lincoln Avenue to Silverado Trail at the five-point intersection at Third Street. Some 4,000 vehicles a day use it, officials say.

The city came close to reconstructing East Avenue early in this decade, but ran into financial problems. The money got spent on other things, said former Mayor Ed Henderson, an Alta Heights resident.

“It’s pretty bad,” Henderson said of the pocked and patched asphalt that makes driving on East Avenue a bone-jarring experience.

“It would be about time,” said Paul Warson, a Spring Street resident. “It’s a dangerous street.”

Warson spoke Monday as he and his wife Leah were walking their daughter Alexa, a kindergartner at Alta Heights, home. At the same time, they kept a tight grip on their 3-year-old son, Nate.

Holding hands is a family rule when walking on East Avenue, the Warsons said. Having a continuous sidewalk will allow the family to walk without fear, they said.

City officials couldn’t recall the last time that so much money was spent to pave and install sidewalks on a single street. This is a major effort, requiring two federal sidewalk grants, state and federal gas tax money and $1 million from the city’s general fund.

The City Council approved the local contribution last summer when city revenues were still strong.

The budget for street reconstruction and repaving is    $1.7 million, while the sidewalk work will total $700,000.

This should be enough to repave the full length of East, assuming the city gets favorable bids, LaRochelle said. In today’s slow economy, “There are some hungry contractors out there,” he said.

If bids come in higher than expected, the city should be able to pave the majority of the street from Third Street to at least Clark Street, he said.

The sidewalk work will fill in the gaps on the east side of the street from Alta Heights School north to Clark, said Mark Andrilla, the city engineer in charge of the project.

East Avenue hasn’t received a major pave job “in collective memory,” Andrilla said. There are no records of substantial work since 1980, he said.

While improving East Avenue, the city will take a look at the traffic circle at Highland Drive. Intended to slow traffic on East, the circle is a frequent target of criticism.

Alta Heights resident Michael Weinberg called the traffic circle “a serious accident waiting to happen” at November’s meeting of the city’s Traffic Advisory Committee.

The circle was failing to slow traffic, while putting pedestrians in jeopardy, Weinberg said. The aesthetics of the circle, which features three spindly potted trees, left a lot to be desired, he said.

“Nobody gets it,” Leah Warson said of the circle. Having stop signs on the Highland approaches seemed uncircle-like, she said.

“We will see if there are some ways to improve upon it,” LaRochelle said. “It is a traffic-calming device.”

Bringing curbs and sidewalks up to the circle will better define the intersection, Andrilla said. The circle could be reduced in size, he said.

The city will study the wisdom of installing more stop signs on East Avenue as a way to keep motorists from speeding up once pavement conditions are improved, Andrilla said.

Suzanne Scallion, principal of Alta Heights Elementary School, said she was delighted to hear of the planned improvements. “I’m a big fan of sidewalks,” she said.

Because sidewalks on East are not continuous, most parents do not let their children walk to school, Scallion said.

The city spend a third of its street improvement funds for 2009 on East Avenue, LaRochelle estimated. In picking East Avenue, it was important that the project not totally exhaust city road funds for the year, he said.

Arterial streets in Napa Valley Corporate Park are in even worse shape, but they would cost as much as $3 million to fix, LaRochelle said.

Napa should be spending   $8 million to $10 million a year on its streets to prevent conditions from worsening, LaRochelle said.

He will be asking the City Council for permission to revamp the city’s street program, including the purchase of equipment to make maintenance more effective, he said.