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South Street construction to start this spring
After nearly 10 years since first hitting the proverbial drawing board, a project to improve South Street and create an east-west corridor through Greencastle's south side appears to be off and running at last.
Rieth-Riley Paving and Construction, Indianapolis, has submitted the lowest bid on work to upgrade and extend narrow South Street across the Foxridge area from Zinc Mill Road on the east to U.S. 231 (Bloomington Street) on the west.
It is the first progress in recent years on a project designed to help alleviate congestion along U.S. 231 in and around the Veterans Memorial Highway intersection, while also creating better access to and from Greencastle's East Side by using South Street to connect U.S. 231 with the high school/middle school complex, Ivy Tech and the major industrial and commercial sectors of Greencastle.
Rieth-Riley's bid was approximately $100,000 below engineering estimates on the project, Mayor Bill Dory told the Board of Works Wednesday afternoon.
The board then voted unanimously to approve the city's required match portion ($238,400) of the federal grant project. The overall Rieth-Riley bid of $2,384,000 was the lowest of four submissions to the Indiana Department of Transportation.
Rieth-Riley is the same construction firm that has done both the Anderson and South Indiana streetscape projects involved in the city's Stellar Grant improvements.
Dory said the city's share of the South Street cost will come out of $640,000 that remains in an account funded by the $3 million DePauw University contribution/match that leveraged its planned Anderson Street improvements against the city's Stellar Communities Grant that provided $19 million for improvement projects within Greencastle since March 2011.
A notice to proceed on the South Street project is expected to be issued "within the next few weeks," Mayor Dory said, while construction is due to start this spring.
Roots of the South Street project can be traced back to 2007 when a former city engineer offered renderings of how an extended South Street might look when carried westerly across 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 a funny thing happened on the way to construction. The project got caught up in an INDOT belt-tightening move.
And in 2013, "INDOT pulled the plug on the project, saying they were overexposed," former Mayor Sue Murray told the Banner Graphic in August 2014.
Essentially that meant INDOT was not getting enough federal funding to cover all the road projects promised on drawing boards across the state.
But city officials weren't about to let the project die.
And after a six-month fight to get South Street back on the drawing board, INDOT promised a 2014 bid letting and 2015 construction cycle. Of course, that did not happen as scheduled either.
But now that the bids have been let, city officials hope the South Street project can unfold in just a single construction season.
However, the project does involve sidewalks, gutters, roadwork and creation of a whole new section of roadway designed to allow South Street to intersect with U.S. 231 (no word on a stoplight at this point). The extended street is designed to emerge at 231 from between Feld's Carpet and Casey's General Store on Bloomington Street.
While South Street will remain a two-lane road, the pavement will be replaced, drainage improved and sidewalks added on one or both sides of the road.
On the east side of the project, work will begin at Zinc Mill Road, while on the west, South Street will be extended from East Street.
"We're really getting our bang for our buck," Board of Works member Trudy Selvia suggested after hearing the bidding news.
"It will be very beneficial to the city," she added.
Selvia joined Mayor Dory and new board member Scott Tuggle in approving the city's South Street funding.