PETOSKEY — City projects on Howard Street and in the Park Garden parking lot are entering their final stages.
City manager Shane Horn provided an update to the Petoskey City Council during their meeting on Monday, May 18 and said both “are coming up against the fourth quarter.”
“Both have progressed very well and that’s a credit to our contractors that are working diligently to get this work done,” he said.
Howard Street
The reconstruction of Howard Street from Mitchell to Michigan has been meeting important milestones.
“Water and storm sewer have been completed,” Horn said. “All infrastructure is in place underground. Sidewalk brick work has started this week. Irrigation and restoration work has begun. Sod and tree planting starting this week. And then asphalt paving to start the last week of May.”
Horn noted that project work is heavily dependent on the weather.
“Days like today (Monday, which saw heavy rain) don’t allow a lot of progress,” he said. “So hopefully we don’t have many more washouts going forward.”
Council member Charlie Willmott said he was impressed by the project’s progress.
“It looks like it’s ready to pave now, almost,” he said. “This looks like it’s going to be, hopefully, earlier than you had originally forecast if the weather holds out because it’s going beautifully as compared to last year, which was torture.”
The Howard Street project initially had a mid-June completion date.
“I certainly don’t want to over-promise, but we are headed on the right trajectory to potentially do a little bit better than what we said,” Horn said.
Park Garden lot
In the Park Garden lot, storm sewer infrastructure is also completed.
“Irrigation and landscaping work has started,” Horn said. “Grading and the aggregate base is in place and complete. We will begin asphalt paving this week. Concrete approach and remaining sidewalk to be completed the last week of May, and then that follows cleanup, restoration pavement markings, signage and the pay station installation following paving.”
Downtown impact
Horn and council members also discussed some of the impacts to downtown businesses and the farmers market due to construction.
“I think we’re all pushing in the right direction,” Horn said. “We have taken some hits with downtown business owners. They’ve expressed concern about having that intersection down. We started very early. We started it in April as quickly as we could. No one wants to get out of downtown quicker than us. We want to get out of the way. We understand that it’s an inconvenience. But hopefully this short-term inconvenience is something we’ll be able to look back and say it was just a blip on the radar and we can all enjoy improved infrastructure, we can all enjoy improved surface and just the amenities that come along with that.”
Council member Lindsey Walker also noted that the Downtown Petoskey Farmers Market delayed its planned opening by a week, to May 29.
“The decision was made by the chamber to push it one more week,” Horn said. “We’ll have it one, maybe two weeks at the former Petoskey News-Review site in that parking lot … then we’ll obviously be back open and be able to put it back where it was.”
Nikki Devitt, president and CEO of the Petoskey Regional Chamber of Commerce, said they reached out to all the market vendors prior to making a decision about the schedule and they will likely extend the market a week longer in the fall.
“The biggest concern was just the additional traffic. And by holding one week it allows us a little bit more safety, a little bit more flexibility,” she said. “The original plan was to have it on the Greenway corridor, but with construction and with the Darling (parking) lot and the space that we would need for the vendors we were concerned that could be a safety issue as well. This is kind of the best situation.”
— Contact Jillian Fellows at jfellows@petoskeynews.com.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Downtown Petoskey construction entering the home stretch
Reporting by Jillian Fellows, The Petoskey News-Review / The Petoskey News-Review
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