NEWBURYPORT — State Street will be bustling with sidewalk and paving work for the next two-to-three weeks as the city continues on the latest phase of its downtown lighting and State Street paving projects.
“We are excited to get this done. It’s going to make a huge difference to residents and visitors to Newburyport,” Mayor Sean Reardon said Monday.
On the same day, Reardon provided an update on how work has been going so far.
“We finished milling State Street on Friday afternoon so we were able to open it for the weekend. Our contractor D&R finished milling on Otis and Garden today,” Reardon said.
A truck could be seen carrying away a Wirtgen W 50 Ri cold milling machine and a Bobcat S770 skid-steer loader Monday morning since they were no longer needed for mill work.
Reardon said the paving schedule will be determined based on completion of casting adjustments of utility manholes and other iron fixtures in the road.
“These casting adjustments will be a moving work zone in order to impact parking least as possible. I am hoping we are complete within two weeks on paving and three or less on sidewalks,” Reardon said.
The repaving is part of the third phase of a project the city has been working on for three years.
The other part of the latest phase will see 47 Water Street lights replaced, with 18 new lights being installed between State Street and Pleasant Street; nine on the western side of State Street between Pleasant and Harris streets, and nine on the eastern side of State Street between Pleasant and Prospect streets.
City electrician Jeff Mattheson recently began prep work for the light pole bases working with TW Construction, while Allied Construction has began brickwork, pausing to allow the mill work to go on.
“Allied will be back on State tomorrow working on sidewalks. They will continue until we must pull them off for paving,” Reardon said, Monday.
This entailed trenching close to the curbline to install conduit and then connecting the conduit under the curb to the sidewalk, where concrete bases will be poured below the grade of the brick.
A small void has been created where each pole will be installed, marked by cones on wood blocks.
The light poles have a long (20-week) lead time, so they will be installed next spring. Once the prep work is fully done, residents will see small circles of sand and gravel within the brick sidewalks where light poles will be installed.
The cost of this phase of the project is $345,000 with most of the money coming from the city’s paid parking account, according to Reardon.
Matt Petry covers Amesbury and Salisbury for The Daily News of Newburyport. Email him at: mpetry@northofboston.com.