Officials with the Municipality of Chatham-Kent are hopeful that Grand Avenue West will be reopened sooner rather than later.
The stretch of Grand Avenue West between Churchill Street and Courthouse Lane was closed in mid-July for construction after a large sinkhole was discovered. However, according to Tim Dick, Chatham-Kent's director of drainage, they are working to possibly reopen part of the roadway in time for the Labour Day long weekend.
Dick said they are currently in the process of site clean-up as well as testing and reconnecting the section of water main that had to be removed.
"If everything goes well, we're hoping to pave the northerly three lanes... Thursday or Friday at the latest with the goal to try and get two lanes opened," he said. "That comes with the caution that if we run into any issues or anything. But right now, if the rain is over... we've made arrangements to bring in another paving company [crew] with our engineering folks that look after the paving contract. So that's the plan at this point."
According to Dick, construction went as planned with the exception of some standard challenges with a large excavation including getting around utility lines. There were also some surprises along the way including finding the foundation of an old factory while they were digging the site. Although the could soon be partially opened to traffic, it may be a few more months until the area starts looking back to normal.
"Now the challenge is to get it regraded and resurfaced. Because of the nature of the excavation being so large, we're not going to put concrete in the curbs, it'll all be an asphalt product," Dick explained. "Then we will make the decision whether we put temporary barriers in there for the winter or not until next year after we allow it to settle... then next year we'll restore it with proper curbs and proper grades to get it back to the where we would expect it before we dug it up."
Dick said he expects the work that was done to last for a "long time" but said drivers may see some bumps in the road as things settle, literally.
"I don't want the travelling public to think that the road is going to be a perfectly smooth runway all winter long. I expect we'll see some settlement, perhaps some substantial settlement that we have to deal with," he said.
Considering the work was unexpected, Dick said overall he's happy with how everything played out.
"All in all, it went reasonably well. Obviously, it's taken longer than many would have liked. We've done the best we could," he said. "I'm most happy that we did it safely and we didn't have any high river events during the construction which would have been disastrous."
