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Some 10 years in the making, South Street now open to traffic
Finally completed -- as wished, hoped and prayed for -- within a single construction season, the South Street project on Greencastle’s South Side is all but finished and now open to traffic.
Mayor Bill Dory made that announcement to the Greencastle Redevelopment Commission Wednesday evening after its members unanimously approved the final right-of-way acquisition parcel for $4,002.
“South Street is open to traffic,” Dory said, adding that “it’s not totally done but they’re finishing up sidewalk, sod and some other things, and hope to be 98 percent done before winter sets in.”
The mayor urged local residents to remain cautious because of ongoing construction still within the corridor created between Zinc Mill Road on the east and U.S. 231 (Bloomington Street) on the west.
“It’s a nice addition to the community,” Dory added of a project that had been on the local drawing board for some 10 years before construction started in late February.
The work was funded by the Indiana Department of Transportation with federal highway funds. Local tax dollars were used as match for the federal funds.
Rieth-Riley Paving and Construction, Indianapolis, submitted the lowest of four bids at $2,384,000 (approximately $100,000 below engineering estimates) on work to upgrade and extend narrow South Street across the Foxridge area. The city’s required match portion was $238,400 on the federal grant project.
The project was 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.
Roots of the South Street project can be traced back to 2007 when a former city engineer produced renderings of how an extended South Street might look if it were carried westerly all the way to U.S. 231.
Then in 2009, the city received a grant award and signed a contract for preliminary engineering on the project. Bids were expected to be let in 2013.
But a funny thing happened on the way to actual construction. The project got caught up in some INDOT belt-tightening measures.
And in 2013, INDOT “pulled the plug on the project, saying they were overexposed,” then-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 similar drawing boards across the state.
City officials, however, were not about to let the idea 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 once bids were let this past winter, city officials were extremely hopeful the South Street project could unfold in just a single construction season.
And now it appears that has essentially come to pass on a project involving sidewalks, gutters, roadwork and creation of a whole new section of roadway designed to allow South Street to intersect with U.S. 231.
The extended street emerges at 231/Bloomington Street between Casey’s General Store and Feld’s Carpet, directly across from the entrance to Ottawa Park.