ALBANY - More than five years in the making, the first phase of a Codornices Creek restoration, from the railroad tracks to Fifth Street, is nearing completion.

Workers are putting the finishing touches on the restoration, planting hundreds of native plants and trees. In the nearly $1 million project, the creek was dug up, given a meander and taken out of a concrete channel.

The goal, said Albany community development director Ann Chaney, was to create an amenity for residents, make the creek more natural, enhance wildlife habitat and control flooding.

"It's been a real fascinating little project," Chaney said.

The project concept was born 10 years ago and got moving with a $100,000 grant from Caltrans in 1997. Marking the Berkeley-Albany border, the section of creek is located just west of University Village, southeast of Target and sandwiched between two sports fields.

The creek had been straightened and placed in a concrete channel, said Jeff Hagar, a fishery biologist with his own firm.

"In fact, a long section of creek was actually a straight concrete culvert," Hagar said.

With the city working with administrators from the city of Berkeley and UC Berkeley, the project earned a grant close to $1 million in 2002, from the Department of Water Resources, as well as a $100,000 grant from the Coastal Conservancy.

The city negotiated for land with UC Berkeley and ball-field users, and the project broke ground in September, said Roger Leventhal, the director of engineering for the Waterways Restoration Institute and one of the main designers of the project.

"This is on the scale of a real restoration project -- restoring the creek to what it was," said Leventhal, admiring the newly meandering creek while a light rain fell.

Hagar was brought to relocate about 40 trout, some more than a foot long, while a section of the creek was de-watered. The number of trout surprised everyone, and some are being tested at UC Davis to see if they belong on the federal endangered species list, Hagar said.

"It's a little more exciting to have threatened species living and thriving in town in Berkeley and Albany," said Hagar, explaining the significance. "That's kind of a unique thing."

The fish were moved upstream where the second phase of the project, from Fifth Street to Eighth Street, is planned to begin next summer.

An adjacent bike trail is planned as well, Leventhal said.

In the meantime, a pedestrian bridge running across the creek will be built, probably in December, as the final piece of the first phase of the project.

"It's part of the eventual planned restoration all the way up to San Pablo (Avenue), with an adjacent trail, which we've been working on seven to 10 years, depending on how you count it," said project supporter Susan Schwartz, the president of the Friends of Five Creeks. "A long, long time."