South St. plan still alive, bids due Dec. 2015

Friday, August 29, 2014
The narrow width of South Street makes meeting another vehicle -- particularly a school bus -- a tight squeeze. Improvements are due in project now listed for 2016 construction. (Banner Graphic file photo)

You've got to walk before you can crawl, so it's baby steps first for the long-proposed South Street improvement project.

During the August meeting of the Greencastle Redevelopment Commission, the board approved a right-of-way services contract with Lochmueller and Associates, marking one of the initial but necessary steps toward ultimately improving and extending narrow South Street on the city's South Side from Zinc Mill Road on the east to U.S. 231 South (Bloomington Street) on the west.

It is also the first real sign of life in a couple of years for a project destined to help alleviate congestion along U.S. 231 in and around the Veterans Memorial Highway intersection, while creating better access to and from the city's East Side by connecting U.S. 231 with the high school, Ivy Tech and the prime industrial and commercial sides of Greencastle.

"Thank you for the opportunity to move forward," Lochmueller's Patty Yount of North Vernon told the commission. "We all know this project has been

around a while."

The project's roots can actually be traced back to 2007 when a former city engineer offered preliminary renderings of how an extended South Street might look carried westerly over to U.S. 231.

Then in 2009, the city received a grant award and signed a contract for preliminary engineering. Bids were expected to be let in 2013.

But alas, the project got caught in an Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) belt-tightening decree.

"In 2013, INDOT pulled the plug on the project," Mayor Sue Murray told the Banner Graphic, "saying they were overexposed."

Essentially that meant INDOT was not getting enough federal funding to cover all the projects on drawing boards across the state.

But city officials didn't let the project die.

"We had to fight for six months to get it back," Mayor Murray explained.

Even then, INDOT promised a 2014 bid letting and 2015 construction cycle that did not happen as scheduled.

"So this has been moved back significantly," Redevelopment Commission member Tanis Monday suggested.

"Another year," Mayor Murray said, indicating that the South Street schedule now calls for a Dec. 9, 2015 bid letting and a 2016 construction period.

"Hopefully it can be just one construction season," the mayor told the Banner Graphic, "but it involves sidewalks, gutters, road and a whole section that's not even been built on yet at all."

Preliminary drawings indicate the extension that would allow South Street to intersect with U.S. 231 is designed to come out between Feld's Carpet and Casey's General Store on Bloomington Street.

South Street will remain a two-lane road, although the pavement will be replaced and sidewalks added on one or both sides of the street.

The proposed upgrade to South Street in Foxridge (the area south of Veterans Highway and east of Bloomington Street) will be primarily funded with federal dollars administered by INDOT. Planned changes also include adding curbs with a closed storm sewer system.

On the east, the project will begin at Zinc Mill Road, while on the west, South Street will also be extended from East Street.

During a 2012 City Hall open house, South Street construction costs were estimated at $3.2 million with the federal government providing an 80-20 grant (in which Greencastle must provide the 20 percent match). Almost certainly those costs have risen in the interim.

The contract approved for signing by Mayor Murray with Lochmueller Associates engineering for right-of-way services will include assisting with properties that will require only an easement as well as those in which a piece of roadside right-of-way will need to be acquired.

"I can't believe how many properties there were," Redevelopment Commission member Drew Brattain said, reviewing the contract before approving it for services that will pay the consultants a fee not to exceed $232,000.

A list included with the contract enumerates 36 separate pieces of property that are affected by the project.

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  • So will the intersection at 231 have a light or a 4-way stop?

    -- Posted by Geologist on Mon, Sep 1, 2014, at 5:44 PM
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