Greenwood looking to DOT for Main Street repairs
Greenwood’s Main Street will apparently undergo a significant resurfacing in the next few years as a premature deterioration from a 2006 project has led to the need for extensive patching and short-term fixes. The work could come as soon as 2024, but the city is looking for an interim fix that will last until then.
The city has been in contact with the state Department of Transportation to see what can be done to fix a problem that grew serious last spring with crumbling of pavement along a seam that connects the main traffic lanes with the parking lanes. The Clark County Highway Department applied a short-term patching fix for a temporary remedy, but something more significant is needed soon as the deterioration progresses. Although no work on Highway 73 through the city had been on the DOT’s near-future schedule as of last year, it now looks as if it will be included in a major reconstruction of Highway 73 from the north city limits to Highway 29.
Clark County Highway Commissioner Brian Duell said the problems on Greenwood’s Main Street became quite noticeable last year as asphalt applied in a 2006 reconstruction job showed premature signs of deterioration. The state paid the county to fill the crumbling seam with asphalt and that got the city through a year, but something more significant is needed, Duell said.
In checking last spring with the DOT’s schedule for area resurfacing jobs, Duell saw that the .9-mile portion of Highway 73 through the city was not listed at all. However, the DOT had planned for a 2024 job to rebuild the highway starting from Hunt Street on the north end of Greenwood to Highway 29.
“I talked to the DOT about getting the project extended (to include Main Street),” Duell said.
The DOT is to meet with city officials on Feb. 26 to talk further about plans. The city wants the state to make improvements, and has already committed to spending $105,000 to have the parking lanes repaved when the state does the traffic lanes. When the DOT does a job through a city, it typically covers the cost of the main traffic lanes, while the city pays for the parking lanes.
Even if the state does a Main Street resurfacing in 2024, that still leaves four years for the city to deal with a Main Street that Duell said has “distinctive pothole problems.” Normally, he said, when a road is to be resurfaced, only short-term patches are applied just to get through to the main job. In this case, though, Duell said he wants to work with the DOT to ”see what we can do for maybe a better fix.
“We’ve got to come up with a better idea for a 3-year fix,” he said.
Greenwood Mayor Jim Schecklman also said the city can’t go for 3-4 more years with the road in the condition it’s in now.
“It can’t be just the little patches that they’ve done previously and that’s what we’re going to emphasize and hopefully they’ll agree,” Schecklman said.
