Indianapolis Road project right around the corner now

The first signs of life on the long-awaited Indianapolis Road widening and drainage improvement project are apparently just around the corner.

That’s what Mayor Bill Dory told the City Council at its December meeting, noting that the contractor, Feutz Construction of Paris, Ill., has been issued a notice to proceed on the project.

“Tree clearing should start shortly,” the mayor advised, adding that utility line relocation should follow after the first of the year.

Construction is then expected to commence -- weather permitting -- in March or April on a project for which Feutz submitted the accepted low bid of $1,161,773.

The work will also include sidewalks along both sides of Indianapolis Road (an alternate bid was solicited for sidewalks on just one side but will not be necessary because of the lower total bid price).

The city is familiar with Feutz Construction’s work as it also did the 2011 Percy Julian Drive improvement project, Mayor Dory noted.

The Indianapolis Road project proceeded to this point with some exceptional right-of-way acquisition earlier this year.

This past July the Greencastle Redevelopment Commission authorized a maximum expenditure of $47,262 to finalize right-of-way acquisition between the easternmost entrance to Kroger and the stoplight by McDonald’s at Percy Julian Drive/First Street.

In all, the city needed to acquire less than one acre of right-of-way as perpetual easements for the Indianapolis Road project (.918 acres to be exact) along with .675 acres of temporary easements during construction. A number of parcels were donated by property owners.

The figure was drastically reduced from original engineering estimates of more than a decade ago that pegged acquisition costs at $1.5 million or more. Of course, that was for a much larger swath of property along Indianapolis Road to facilitate a project that will widen the roadway to three lanes and address drainage issues.

The project is being partially funded by the city’s Community Crossings grant with the Redevelopment Commission providing the local match.

The largest amount paid for land acquisition was $28,325 for commercial property purchased from Sandor Development, the Indianapolis company that put in the strip center immediately east of Kroger.

It is necessary to go deeper into that parcel and secure more property there to help remedy drainage issues along Indianapolis Road, particularly in the ravine existing between the Sandor site and the adjacent Carkeek home to the east.

In prior discussions about the Indianapolis Road project, Mayor Dory has called the ravine area west of Headley Hardware a “conundrum” as far as figuring out how to capture the stormwater without forcing it to run all the way to McDonald’s where the infrastructure is apparently not sufficient enough to handle all of it.