$5.4 MILLION PROJECT

Secor Road rebuilding officially concluded

Merchants block party to celebrate completion

Orange barrels no long greet motorists along Secor Road now that the street's $5.4 million reconstruction is completed.

The last stripe has been painted and the last manhole seated on rebuilt Secor Road between Central Avenue and Monroe Street, and Cadie Bergen couldn’t be happier about it.

“It was pretty bad for us over the summer,” the manager at Bassett’s Health Foods, 3344 Secor Rd., said Friday. “We never knew from one day to the next whether our main lot entrance would be open or not. … Now we’re super excited that it’s finally finished.”

Steve Hamilton, the city’s public liaison for the $5.4 million reconstruction, said the project, which started with replacement of a water main in March, was officially complete on Thursday.

Major lane closings ended in late July, but scattered closings continued for finishing work that included leveling manholes, grass seeding, traffic-signal installation, and stripe painting.

City officials are coordinating a merchants’ “block party,” scheduled for Oct. 19, to promote businesses in the affected area and, Ms. Bergen hopes, “get the word out” that all the construction on Secor is gone.

“We have people calling us asking if it’s over yet,” she said. “Hopefully, business will pick back up for us.”

The Blade is sponsoring the event by providing tents, live musicians, and other promotional support. A beer garden, food-vendor booths, children’s activities, and a blood-donation drive are among activities in the works.

Project contractor Geddis Paving is to receive a bonus of about $540,000 for finishing construction early, very early, actually, compared with its Nov. 1 contractual deadline.

The contractor maxed out the $10,000 per day early-reopening bonus in its contract, which had a cap of 10 percent of the contract’s initial value.

“They started working around the clock, adding extra shifts to move forward,” said David Welch, Toledo’s public utilities director, who added, “We were concerned at the beginning that it was too tight of a schedule.”

The peak of the project's traffic disruption arguably was the two weeks during late June and early July when Secor's I-475 interchange ramps were closed.

Project officials chose that option instead of trying to work through the interchange area on the grounds that work could get done faster and without creating turning problems for trucks and other long vehicles at the ramp intersections.

They had the poor luck of scheduling that phase during a rainy spell that stretched the ramp closings out from 10 days to 14.

However, overall, Mr. Welch said, the project was blessed with decent weather.

Contact David Patch at: dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.