MEADVILLE — For Mike McMullen, project manager for Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s $6 million North Street Project, the 2013 construction season is right around the corner. As Meadville City Manager Joe Chriest sees it, that means that the time for area residents to start preparing for as much as two years of major disruptions along one of the city’s main thoroughfares has already begun.

The long-awaited project will extend from Water Street to State Street. “We’ll be reconstructing North Street between the curbs, but the overall width of the roadway corridor will remain unchanged,” McMullen said during a recent interview. Major changes, however, are in store at the intersections, where the turning radius of each corner will be redesigned to accommodate traffic volume and flow measured during the traffic study portion of the project.

To accommodate those changes, some structures built too close to the corner will have to be moved.

“There’s nothing we can do about the work,” Chriest said Thursday. “It needs to be done. But if everyone is informed and has a year to plan for it, it may not be bad.”

Stressing that major improvements — both functional and aesthetic — are in store, Chriest urges area residents to adopt a “short-term pain, long-term gain” point of view

Functionally, the roadway will be paved, lanes will be marked and new traffic signals and controls will be installed at each intersection. Although traffic signals have been replaced with stop signs at numerous intersections throughout the city, the traffic study indicated that all intersections in the project area should retain their signal lights, Chriest said.

Intersections will be wide enough for large trucks to make the turns. “If you’re a motorist in a small vehicle, it can be kind of intimidating,” McMullen said of situations he’s observed at North Street intersections.

Aesthetically, new curbs and sidewalks will be installed and PennDOT is in discussions with the city about ornamental lighting. “Right now, we believe the entire thing will look like Chestnut Street — with bricks along the sidewalk between the curb and the sidewalk,” Chriest said.

PennDOT has also been coordinating with Allegheny College art professor Amara Geffen, who has coordinated environmental art projects throughout the area including several award-winning collaborations with PennDOT.

“There are several parts of the project we’re talking to PennDOT and the city about,” Geffen said Thursday. Stormwater enhancement for the right of way along the roadway, for example, is under discussion. “When we did the Mill Run environmental assessment, one of the things we learned is that from where Mill Run is above ground at Meadville Medical Center (near Liberty Street) to where it comes above ground at the library (near North Main Street), there’s a significant decline in water quality,” Geffen explained. “Some of those issues will be addressed.”

At the moment, Geffen and her team from Allegheny College’s Center for Economic and Environmental Development are standing by, ready to turn stormwater management into a community partnership. “We’re ready to start dialogue with the community as soon as we get the go-ahead from PennDOT,” she said.

Stormwater isn’t her only concern, Geffen added. Banners, bus stops, bike racks and street paintings are also included in her planning process.

A tentative timeline

With PennDOT engineers “fairly well along” with the final design phase of the long-awaited project, McMullen’s goal is to open bids on the project in the fall of 2012.

Much of the timing is driven by funding for the project, which is 90 percent federal and 10 percent state. “Because federal funds make up the bulk of the funding, funds won’t be available until after October 2012,” McMullen explained. Although the funds won’t be available until the fall of 2012, they have been committed to the project, he added.

Because funds won’t be available until the very end of the 2012 construction season, people will see very little activity that fall, although the contractor may make some preparations and some work on underground utilities must be done.

Serious construction is expected to begin in the spring of 2013. “There will be inconvenience to motorists,” McMullen said.

Tentative plans call for construction to proceed block by block with temporary detours rerouting traffic. “Because there are businesses in between the intersections, when crews are working on a block, we’ll restrict traffic so only one direction will be available at a time and the other direction will be detoured around the project,” McMullen said.

As for how long the disruption will continue, “It will definitely take all of 2013,” McMullen said, noting that the construction effort will be complete sometime in 2014. “As we get closer, the timeline becomes more exact,” he said.

The project will cut through the heart of the city’s northern B-2 general business district.

“The purpose of this district,” according to Meadville’s Municipal Code, “is to foster a variety of retail and service business uses in an auto-oriented setting.” McMullen and Chriest agree that a major effort will be made to limit the impact on North Street businesses as much as possible.

For now, the process of acquiring necessary rights of way has begun.

“Because we’re staying within the roadway width, people who own property on the mid-block areas will not be affected,” Mullen said.  “Property owners at the corners will be the most impacted.”

PennDOT is now in the “pre-negotiation meetings or contacts” stage with those property owners.

“Those discussions are private,” McMullen said, declining to divulge specific details because of the extremely early stage of the process. “Some buildings that are really tight to the corner will be moved,” he said. “We will make arrangements with the owners for relocation somewhere else.”



Mary Spicer can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at mspicer@meadvilletribune.com.