March 22, 2009

City won’t close street
Second Street will stay open during Brewery Grade reconstruction

    The city has reversed its plan to fully shut down the East Second Street and Brewery Grade intersection during four months of construction, City Manager Nolan Young announced Friday.
    Instead, it will keep east-west traffic on East Second flowing through most of the work.
    The city responded to strong opposition from East Second business owners, who strongly opposed a full four-month closure during a meeting March 18 on the intersection reconstruction project. They told the city a full closure would be disastrous for their businesses.
    As previously announced, the City of The Dalles received $2.4 million in Federal Economic Stimulus Funds that completed the funding for the East Gateway Project that will reconstruct the intersection of Brewery Grade and 2nd Street (Hwy 30).
    Instead of full closure, flagging delays will be required during periods of intense construction. These periods will be the exception, not the general rule, the city announced.
    To accomplish this and complete the project in a timely manner, Brewery Grade between Second and Ninth streets will need to be closed during much of the construction period.
    The city expects that the closure, which will begin the first part of August, will continue for four to five months.
    During this closure of Brewery Grade, additional signage will be placed on Hwy 97 to give advanced warning of increased traffic anticipated through the intersection of Fremont/Columbia View Heights Drive and Hwy 197.
    With the development of the new traffic control plan along East Second Street there will no longer be a need to bring this item to The Dalles City Council in a public hearing in the month of April, as previously anticipated.
    At the March 23 meeting City Manager Nolan Young will be updating the council on the amended traffic control plan.
    “It is necessary for us to move quickly on resolving this issue so that the engineers can create the final bid documents during the timeline required by the economic stimulus funding,” Young said. “We need to have final bid documents to the Oregon Department of Transportation by April 20 with bids being opened by June 17, 2009. We anticipate that construction will not begin until the first part of August.”
More details regarding construction schedules and traffic flow will be made available as the project start date approaches.
    For further information, call Nolan Young at (541) 296-5481 Ext. 1118.