If you’ve traveled Lower Wheaton Way recently, you’ve seen crews are making progress on widening the sidewalks and paving the road as part of its $3.4 million makeover. Today, there’s paving going on as well, and unless you want to sit in traffic for awhile, I would find another route around the work if you can.
There’s been a few kinks on the project — and one of them involves some utility issues on the road’s intersection at 18th Street.
Crews have taken out the little section of Marlow Avenue between Lower Wheaton and 18th, to make room for a sidewalk. The plan was to bend 18th street a bit where it comes into Lower Wheaton, but no one anticipated a large CenturyLink utility box buried underground (pictured) to the east of the roadway, according to city project manager Ed Aban. The result is that CenturyLink has been moving the utility box (called a “duct bank”) east and 18th Street’s new design had to be bent back westward so as to not run over the duck bank.
In total, the project reconstructs three new intersections, along with this one.
Here’s the latest overall project update from Aban:
This week, the Contractor has been placing sidewalk, mostly on the land side. Today, the Contractor will be doing curb and gutter, and will be paving trench crossings and areas to be patched. The hydroseeding on the land side that was scheduled for the week of October 1st, but was rescheduled to October 13. The construction of the sidewalk, curb, and gutter will continue on October 14 through 16. The curb and gutter is a priority since the Contractor has planned to complete the final overlay in the week of October 20. The weather will be the determining factor to accomplish this planned work.
If there are any concerns or questions, please contact Project Engineer (Ed Aban) at 360-473-2317 or field representative (Leo Johnson) at 360-621-1666.
The entire project’s slated to wrap up later this fall.
