Bloomington Street not open quite yet ...

The forecast deadline for the reopening of Bloomington Street/U.S. 231 in Greencastle came and went Thursday without cause for celebration.

The new finish line date, Mayor Bill Dory told the Greencastle Redevelopment Commission (RDC) Wednesday evening, is now Friday, Dec. 8. That’s weather permitting, of course.

“It was supposed to be open Thursday but no such luck,” Dory said.

The contractor, Rieth-Riley Construction, is “just trying to get all the little details done,” Dory explained Thursday.

Next week, for example, crews will be paving the approaches to city side streets.

Pavement markings were added Thursday, some in paint and some in thermo plastic.

Other “odds and ends” yet to be completed, the mayor told the Banner Graphic, include touch-up work in grassy areas as well as likely requiring a whole day just to remove the barrels, barricades and signs spread across the length of the project from Washington Street to Veterans Memorial Highway. That work can’t commence until everything else is done.

Meanwhile, RDC member Gary Lemon asked the mayor what happened on Locust Street, where the street was barricaded just south of Washington Street Monday night.

Dory explained that there was a problem with a lateral sewer in the middle of the street.

“We don’t know whether it developed before construction, during construction or after construction,” the mayor said of a blockage that necessitated a hole being cut in the newly repaired street to allow city crews to remedy the problem.

“It made me sick,” Dory told the RDC, alluding to the hole in the street.

“We don’t know yet whether it was caused inadvertently by construction,” he said Thursday. “I don’t want to assign blame. We don’t even know if there’s blame to assign.”

He explained that city sanitary sewers can be checked by video cameras to find leaks and blockages. However, the system doesn’t have the ability for the camera to go into lateral sewers.

Dory noted that the city regularly coordinates with utility companies when there is a street project to avoid issues where newly resurfaced streets need to be cut into because of problems beneath them.

All such work was done on the Locust Street project, he noted.