Council approves Elm Street revamp, nature trail surfacing
by Lindsay Hoeppner · November 19, 2009

Freddy Kruger may not haunt Elm Street in West Liberty like he does in Wes Craven’s popularized horror franchise, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a nightmare driving along the city artery.

The West Liberty City Council is doing its part to quell that problem.

At its Nov. 3 regularly scheduled bi-monthly meeting, the council approved a $1,585,040 base bid from All American Concrete of West Liberty for the restructuring and repaving of Elm Street from Sixth Street to U.S. Highway 6.

“It’s going to be a complete rehabilitation — sanitary, water and storm,” said city engineer Leo Foley.

The project, which is slated to begin this winter and be completed by the end of August, will include slightly widening the street and improving and increasing the size of the storm sewer. The current storm sewer is situated directly in the middle of the street. With the widening of the road, Foley said the new sewer will be moved to the side.

“The reason of that is that we want to try to keep one lane of traffic open at all times,” Foley said. “It’s going to be a tough project — there are going to be a lot of people having to go through construction zones.”

No matter, Foley said he made it a priority when discussing the project with interested contractors that keeping a portion of the street open at all times was a necessity.

“We’re going to work with the people and the businesses to make sure everyone is in business the entire time,” he said. “It’s just not going to be a pretty sight for awhile.”

City manager Chris Ward said discussions on Elm Street began over a year ago, when Foley assisted the city on conducting a 20-year streets plan. The plan rated each street in West Liberty as good, moderately good, moderate, moderately poor or poor.

“From there, it was what conditions the city council decided to do,” Ward said.

Elm Street, which was rated poor, was deemed a priority, and is the first major street the council has focused on since the plan was completed.

Once the city gives All American Concrete notice to proceed, Ward said community meetings will be scheduled at the West Liberty Community Center for those directly effected by the road construction.

However, mayor Chad Thomas said the city is going to make sure the undertaking won’t have much effect on those who rely on Elm Street on a day-to-day basis.

“Part of the construction criteria is that they need to keep one lane open at all times, so I think people are going to want to maybe think about taking alternate streets, but it should not be fully closed, or if it is, it should be for a very short time,” Thomas said. “You may just have to wait for traffic to take turns.”

A new and improved Elm Street isn’t going to be the only change West Liberty will see in the coming months, though.

Along with the repaving and restructuring bid, the council also approved a base bid of $164,269.40 from All American Concrete to pave the West Liberty portion of the Hoover Natural Trail, which stretches from an old railroad bed at the West Liberty Chamber of Commerce to U.S. Highway 6.

Thomas said the surfacing project has been on the city’s agenda for quite some time.

“The plan to develop it has been going on for a long time — well before Chris and I were even in the community,” Thomas said.

Thomas first became involved in the community discussions as a private individual interested in the trail system.

“When I got elected mayor at the special election, I was coming on at about the same time that B&K was firming up plans for Elm Street,” he said. “The original idea was to have a widened street for an inroad bike path.”

Ward said the city faced difficulties with that plan, and instead, focused developing the nature trail.

Foley originally estimated bids for the entire project, including Elm Street and the nature trail, would be placed around $1.9 million.

“Bidding this time of year is the best move in the world for a project that has this much underground, because every contractor wants to keep working in the winter,” Foley said.