No New Year’s resolution can possibly improve the condition of St. Michaels Street.
After seven water main breaks in the past two years, the borough plans to give some much-needed love to St. Michaels in the spring.
The road connects Front Street with Church Street and its surface resembles something of a wide-woven quilt — thanks to the numerous times that repair crews have needed to dig up the asphalt for repairs.
Police Chief Gene Meek has even suggested that folks avoid the street during winter months due to ice hazards.
Underground, things aren’t much prettier.
Borough Manager Mason Villarma anticipates the water line under the road is more than 45 years old. He added that its downtown location lends itself to increased levels of salinity and corrosion from creeping high tides flowing into the underground rock fill.
Capital Projects Director Amber Al-Haddad described the street’s condition as a state of “continued deterioration.”
The St. Michaels improvement project will replace the McKinnon Street repair project that the borough had initially budgeted for this coming spring. The borough still intends to repair McKinnon; the construction is just temporarily on hold. Villarma said those costs will be included in the borough’s 2026 budget.
Villarma anticipates the St. Michaels project will exceed what was budgeted for McKinnon. The borough set aside $300,000 in its 2025 budget for McKinnon repairs. However, Villarma estimates a price tag in the range of $500,000 to $600,000 for St. Michaels.
Borough officials hope a contractor can break ground in the spring. In addition to replacing the pavement, the borough will replace the sidewalks as well as the water and sewage lines underneath the street.
While St. Michaels is desperate for upgrades and repairs, City Hall also realized it might run into issues if the borough went ahead with the McKinnon project first.
“There is a lot of GCI and APT infrastructure on McKinnon,” Villarma said, “and we didn’t feel prepared to take that on in the spring.”
The borough manager added that McKinnon’s congestion with the senior center and residential properties made the project more difficult to accomplish within the timeline that City Hall envisions.
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