File photo of West Wooster Street work. (Debbie Rogers | Sentinel-Tribune)
By Peter Kuebeck
The lengthy series of utilities and road work projects in the city are in the home stretch.
The work is expected to finish this fall.
“They turned the final corner on the sewer (work) and we’re just really now kind of getting to getting things nice and tidy again,” said City Engineer Brad Holman of the work on West Wooster Street during a recent interview.
“Everyone knows it’s been a construction zone for a while now. We’re trying to get everyone buttoned back up. It’s starting to come together.”
Holman said that the water line work in the area is completed, and about 95% of the sewer work is completed. The overall project has been ongoing since last year. The sewer work has focused on consolidating multiple older sewers into one new, larger sewer.
“They turned the corner at West Wooster, at Haskins turning up Parker, and they have about 300 feet of sewer left to put in,” Holman said, noting that they have been digging through multiple feet of bedrock throughout the project. He said that they hope to have the sewer work itself finished in about two weeks, with two-way traffic restored in part of the area.
“Once they get Meeker east fully paved, which will probably be the end of next week, we should start to see two-way traffic in the next couple weeks on West Wooster, at least from Meeker to Church,” Holman said.
Then there will be a project to “mill and fill” West Wooster to get the road repaved, with the goal of having it all wrapped up by the Black Swamp Arts Festival, which is Sept. 8-10.
“I’m hoping in a month we’ll have two-way traffic all the way through there again,” Holman said.
The $3.2 million West Wooster project was included in the 2022 budget and is being paid for from the city’s water and sewer capital improvement funds.
The work on the roundabout at Campbell Hill Road, Alumni Drive and East Wooster Street is also nearing completion.
Holman said that all of the asphalt and pavement striping work has been finished, and that some work on the median island is continuing, including putting in pavers.
The roundabout is expected to open by move-in for Bowling Green State University students. Fall semester classes start Aug. 21.
The installation of light poles is also expected in September.
“That job is going well,” Holman said.
Residential paving projects paid for by American Rescue Plan Act funds also took place this year, with areas including the “bird” streets, Lafayette, Rosewood and others.
Holman additionally said that paving took place on Newton Road from Brim to North Main street, and a section of North Main around Newton. Further, paving on Haskins Road was completed prior to the start of the Wood County Fair.
South of Bowling Green, work is wrapping up on the two-year Ohio 25 project through Portage and Cygnet,
“We are in the final stretch of the final closure,” said Kelsie Hoagland, public information officer, district 2, Ohio Department of Transportation.
Route 25 has been closed while the road was “taken down to the dirt” for the $21.7 million project, Hoagland said.
The four lanes were reconstructed after the drainage was moved from the median, she said.
Route 25 may open by the end of next week, Hoagland said.
There may be some lane restrictions with the final surface paving.
“We’re going to be very close to a smooth ride,” she said. “We know the community has had a lot of patience as we’ve moved through the different phases.”
(Sentinel-Tribune Editor Debbie Rogers contributed to this story.)
