After the temporary runaround
is removed, workers will clean up the site, including planting
grass. The seeding will not be finished until next June, according
to Crish.
The construction site is near the intersection of South Main
Street and McKees Lane, about a half mile south of the Viaduct
over the Mahoning River. PO1.2286
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South
Main Street Bridge
Niles daily Times
October 19, 1992
Jim Flick
Replacement of the South Main Street bridge is
nearly finished, according to Phil Crish, a project engineer
with the Ohio Department of Transportation.
Crish said the new span is scheduled to open to traffic by November
15, although work at the site will probably continue until mid-June
1993. AAA Bridge Construction Company of Columbiana is the general
contractor for the $700,000 project.
“Basically, we’re on the schedule we had projected,”
Crish remarked.
The original target date was November 1, but the deadline is next
June.
Crish said the project has gone on almost flawlessly, hampered
only by the “minor problems” expected during any major
construction project. “You solve them and go on.”
The concrete deck was poured on October 9 and concrete for the
sidewalks was scheduled to be poured last Friday. ODOT will pave
in early November when the weather is right, Crish added.
Improvements Inspector, Mark Hess, has
imposed an October 31 deadline for blacktopping in Niles. A bad
paving job on East State Street laid down in December 1989, and
repaved twice the following summer, prompted the deadline.
Crish said ODOT in not bound by Hess’ rule.
“We go by temperature, not the date,” the ODOT engineer
said. “All we need is two hours of 50-degree weather.”
The temporary runaround opened in July to carry traffic around
the construction site will be removed over the winter, Crish said.
The large concrete culverts used to span the Meander Creek will
be removed for use in a future ODOT project.
The temporary runaround was not in ODOT’s
original plans for the project. Merchants were outraged when they
learned the state planned to detour traffic several miles around
downtown Niles for several months, and protested to ODOT officials
and state legislators.
After two public meetings at the McKinley Memorial,
ODOT added the temporary runaround and its nearly $300,000 price
tag to the project. Thanks to the temporary span, traffic has
not been disrupted by the bridge replacement project. About 15,000
vehicles use the bridge each day, many of them trucks.
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