MOUNT VERNON – Road projects in and around Mount Vernon by the City and the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) are causing intersection closures and detours this spring, City officials report.
Smith Paving continues work on Mount Vernon’s North Main and Chestnut Street intersection, and it will remain closed until May 14 or 15.
The sidewalk and existing curb were removed; with grading, forming and pouring the curbs scheduled this week.
“We’ve advised our contractor that they messed up the detour signs,” Safety-Service Director Rick Dzik told the Mount Vernon News. Instead of Chestnut, the signs said Chester. New detour signs will be sent out.
The contractor will replace the curb and gutter that stuck out into the road at Coshocton Avenue and Vernonview Drive, assistant City engineer Jason Epley said. The contractor will return in a week or two to complete the sidewalk.
The Catherine Street and Oak Street project will begin approximately the first week of May, Epley said. Dirt Dawg Excavating of Ashland was contracted by the City for the major sanitary sewer, water line, curb, gutter, sidewalk and brick street replacements.
A public meeting will be held at 4 p.m. April 22 on the playground of East Elementary School. In case of inclement weather, the meeting will be moved to the school gym.
Roadways will be open to residential traffic when possible, a City news release said. Interruptions as well as outages of water and boil advisories for the area should be expected.
A comparable project was the work done to the brick section of Pleasant Street several years ago, Dzik said.
Another road project will be the resurfacing of State Route 3 from Mount Vernon to the Ashland County line, which will probably start in May. Epley noted the Chestnut and Main intersection that the City is redoing is close to the start of this ODOT resurfacing project.
“I don’t know if they’re necessarily going to close it, but there will definitely be flaggers and work zones all the way to the Ashland County line for a couple weeks to three weeks,” he said.
Sometime around July 5, ODOT will shut down southbound traffic on North Sandusky Street between Franklin and James, Epley said.
That detour will last until November or December, Dzik said.
The project will involve reconstruction of the road; stabilizing it; putting curb, gutter and sidewalk in; a new storm system and realigning Tilden Avenue. The City has done some utility work preparation for this resurfacing. Major work was completed last year on Belmont Avenue, which is right in the St. Mary’s area.
“A lot of people asked us, ‘Why didn’t you pave like the last 10 feet or 15 feet of Belmont?’” Dzik said. “And the whole reason was we knew that this project was coming.”
ODOT will connect the work to the spot — which is just concrete now — where the City put in utilities. That will finish up a lot of major work in that part of town.
Southbound traffic will need to take an alternate route, and truck traffic must use the detour that matches what was used when North Sandusky was shut down for water installation. The southbound detour will be State Route 95 west to State Route 314 and then back onto State Route 29.
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