Road construction ahead of schedule

Road construction at Heritage Parkway and 271st Street and west is moving along ahead of schedule.

Ben Scholtz, transportation project manager and design engineer for the project with HDR, the city’s engineer, said all of the underground utilities - sanitary sewer, water main and storm sewer - are finished from the Heritage Parkway intersection west to Main Avenue. The only utility work relating to that is making a final sewer connection for sanitary in the Main Avenue intersection that will happen in the next phase of the project.

On the far west end of the project, they will be putting one sanitary manhole in that connects where the future Cole Avenue will go. That project should complete the last of the sanitary sewer portion of the project.

“In general, they are ahead of schedule. Those guys did a great job dealing with the two or three blizzard weekends we had earlier in the spring,” Scholtz said. “They were out there working almost every day regardless of the weather.”

Construction crews are working on concrete paving at the intersection of Heritage Parkway and 271st Street. They started from the east side of the intersection and will continue to the west end of the intersection. Once the intersection is paved they will continue paving west toward Main Avenue.

He noted anytime they get rain, crews are working to dry the road out.

“Anytime we get rain we’re trying to work the dirt that’s in that area so it dries out before we put the base for the road in place, that way it doesn’t move around and get all mucky,” Scholtz said. “Then they’ll likely start paving on Heritage over to Main after they finish the west side of the Heritage intersection.”

Scholtz noted the detours at the beginning of the project were a little rough. Now he thinks they are in a good spot.

“We made some modifications to the north-south traffic and management of the right turn, left turn access at Gateway Lane,” he said.

Scholtz feels the project overall is going well.

“I think it’s going extremely well. I think time-wise they’re doing a good job. As far as I can tell, their coordination with the adjacent properties in the area they’ve worked so far has been pretty good,” he said.