State road officials will discuss details of the upcoming $25.5 million reconstruction of Tooele City’s Main Street at a public open house next week.
Final plans for the reconstruction are falling into place, said Jessica Rice, SR-36 Renewed project manager for the Utah Department of Transportation.
Details of those plans, right down to which individual trees will be removed to accommodate new curbs, gutters and sidewalks, will be on display for public review next Wednesday from 6-9 p.m. at Tooele City Hall.
Main Street has a full schedule for the 2015 construction season. There will be three major, officially separate projects on the agenda that will likely run into one another, resulting in a summer of near-continuous road work on the city’s main thoroughfare.
Tooele City’s water main replacement project, which is expected to kick off in March, will replace more than 9,000 feet of pipe buried below Main Street.
A month later, UDOT will begin its work on SR-36 with a resurfacing project in the Stansbury Park area that is scheduled to begin in mid-April. That project will strip off and replace the top inch of pavement on SR-36 from Stansbury Drive to 2000 North.
In June, UDOT expects to break ground on the summer’s featured presentation, SR-36 Renewed — an effort to reconstruct Main Street, the storm drain system beneath it, and the surrounding curbs, gutters and sidewalks from 3 O’clock Drive to 2000 North in Tooele. That project will remove and replace an average of 22 inches of pavement from 3.5 miles of SR-36.
In total, just under 10 miles of the state route will be under construction at some point this summer.
“There will be some pain, but UDOT’s pretty good at working through that with their public involvement and discussing and letting people know what’s coming and trying to work through it quickly,” said Jeff Sims, roadway design lead for the SR-36 Renewed project.
UDOT’s goal is to complete all work on SR-36 by the end of November this year. But in the event it cannot be completed, officials have left room in the project requirements for the contractor to come back in the first part of 2016 and finish it.
Work will likely begin at the north end of town and move south, because the installation of the new storm drain system will go better if construction starts at the lowest elevation and moves uphill, Sims said.
Full road closures during the project are not anticipated, but SR-36 will be reduced to one lane in each direction where the road is under construction.
Access to businesses and side roads will be maintained as much as possible, said Carlye Sommers, a public involvement manager assigned to SR-36 Renewed.
Businesses with more than one approach will always have at least one driveway open, she said, but some side road closures may be necessary. Businesses and residents with one driveway onto Main Street may have to close their driveways for short periods of time during construction.
With businesses, Sommers said UDOT would do its best to keep at least half the driveway open, or to schedule any necessary closure that would be convenient to the business’s usual operating hours. Residents, she said, may see some loss of use, but will be notified in advance of the work.
UDOT’s central goal in writing the requirements for SR-36 Renewed have shifted slightly from minimizing the amount of time the road remains under construction to minimizing the loss of access off of Main Street, Sims said.
There may also be a few one- or two-hour utility disruptions at some locations during the early stages of the project.
Residents will be able to view interactive maps and animations related to the project next week at Wednesday’s open house, and UDOT officials will be on hand to answer specific questions.
There will also be informational brochures with coupons and vouchers featuring local businesses that will be affected by the road work. The open house will take place in the city hall’s rotunda from 6-9 p.m.
City hall is located at 90 N. Main Street.