Roads crew hold final team meeting

After more than a year of digging, installing utilities and pouring concrete on Front Street, the Wrangell Road Improvement Project team meetings wrapped up this week with a final conference at City Hall.

The project, which began on Aug. 16, 2011, has seen Wrangell’s main thoroughfare and underground utilities ripped out and rebuilt from the City Dock to the Case Avenue intersection, costing nearly $6 million, and significantly altering the way Wrangellites moved about downtown for more than 400 days.

Project engineer Eric Voorhees said nearly all the money earmarked for the project has been spent.

“We had $5.8 million that we have paid to McGraw’s Custom Construction for the project and we have about half-a-million left to pay out for the job,” he said.

As many Wrangell residents have seen, concrete at the St. Michael’s Street and Episcopal Street intersection is complete and the intersections are opened to traffic, though concrete pouring continued toward Case Avenue this week. Street signage and topsoil beds were also still being installed this week.

According to project engineer Eric Voorhees the next week will see the project crew finish installing concrete curb and gutter, sidewalk and roadway to Case Avenue. They will also finish installation of street signs and soil up to Case Avenue, as well as cutting and sealing concrete joints.

Borough Assembly member Bill Privett attended the final meeting to inquire about the wrap up – and to congratulate the project team for their hard work.

“I have heard nothing but compliments of late,” Privett said. “The quality of the work, and the look, and all of that, the majority of people talking to me are saying they really do like it. It’s great that we have sidewalks on both sides of the street, going all the way down to City Market. When the other gets opened up down by Rayme’s, it’ll be better.”

The project is slated to be complete by the afternoon of Friday, Sept. 21, though two separate extension requests that would take the project out to Oct. 5 have been requested in order to tie up loose ends on construction and cleanup.