We appreciate the continued patience of our residents and businesses while construction is underway on the square. We are fortunate that the contractors, Meyer Najem, continually reassess their timelines and explore ways to expedite specific components of the project.

Here are the updates following their most recent meeting with city and county officials:

Jefferson Street:

  • After discussion with the City, we will be completing both the East and West sides of the street and turning everything over for public use the middle of September rather than end of August as originally planned. Jefferson Street will no longer be used as a construction entrance. The group in the meeting agreed that this would be safer for the public and an added benefit to have (20) additional spaces turned over here.
  • Additionally, we mentioned the generator last week. Fortunately, we were able to feed the existing streetlights with permanent power, so we have not had to run the generator to this point. We most likely will not need to temporarily power any lights until work on Morgan Street and Main progresses further.
  • For the sidewalk, we are tracking  Wednesday or Thursday of next week for the North end to be opened back up for pedestrian traffic. If anything changes, we will let BMO know.

Morgan Street:

Good news, we were able to get a second crew from our site contractor to try to accelerate perimeter road work. What this means:

  • Demolition of existing curbs and pavers started earlier than anticipated.
  • New storm structures and piping have started to be placed along Morgan Street.
  • Morgan Street will be one lane of traffic while the storm is tied in.
  • Concrete was poured today to bring the road surface back up to driving condition, to allow the eastbound lane to open back up.
  • We had originally planned to keep the street one lane only throughout the duration; however, we are going to keep two lanes open for as long as possible to try to help the flow of traffic around the square.

Thanks again to Meyer Najem for keeping us in the loop and doing their best to mitigate the unknown challenges that come with a project of this magnitude while still moving things along quickly.