Gateway Connector contract awarded

By Bill Byrd
Times West Virginian

FAIRMONT May 16, 2008 01:38 am

— A Preston County construction firm has been awarded a $6.13 million contract for grading and drainage work from the High Level Bridge to a point near Columbia Street for the Gateway Connector Highway, state highway officials said.
The contract given to Mountaineer Contractors Inc. of Kingwood is the first of three that the state Division of Highways hopes to award this year for work on the 1 1/2-mile link between downtown and Interstate 79.
“This contract will be for the work needed to prepare for the paving” of the new four-lane road from downtown to Interstate 79, Greg Phillips said Thursday. He is the manager of the DOH’s District 4 office in Clarksburg.
If all goes as planned, the agency will award a second contract this summer to complete the new interchange (Exit 136) on the interstate, Phillips said.
Later this year, the DOH wants to award a contract for the section from Columbia Street to Haymond Street. That would put two-thirds of the road under contract.
The last section, from Haymond Street to the interstate, has yet to be funded. The latest DOH cost estimate for that half-mile section is $19 million.
Under the 80 percent federal-20 percent state funding formula, the state is waiting for U.S. Rep. Alan B. Mollohan and Congress to provide the federal share first, state officials have said.
It’s more efficient for the cash-strapped state highway program to wait until the 4-1 federal share is available, said Lara Ramsburg, Gov. Joe Manchin’s communications director.
Citing the road’s importance to economic development in Marion County, Mollohan has been asking the state to increase its share of its cost. Last month, Mollohan said getting the final part of the federal share will probably have to wait until a new multi-year federal highway construction bill is debated and approved. The current highway transportation bill expires in 2010.
The start of work on the road is a welcome milestone, however, Phillips and other state officials have said.
Work on the grading and drainage contract should begin in late June, said Phillips and John Boyle, the vice president of operations for Mountaineer Contractors Inc. of Kingwood.
Boyle said the firm’s chief job will be moving water and sewer lines, and building a key section of the new road’s storm drainage system.
“The most important part of the contract is getting the drainage in for all of the road to come,” Boyle said Thursday.
The High Level Bridge over the Monongahela River is the lowest point on the project. Plans call for directing rainfall and meltoff from winter’s snow and ice to run downhill and into the river.
“There will be a mile of pipe constructed within the first two-tenths of the roadway,” he said.
“They can’t build the other sections of the road until our job is done,” Boyle said.
Mountaineer will also build retaining walls and construct a walking path and bicycle trail, amenities that will enhance the road’s significance as the main entrance to Fairmont.
The firm will provide its own traffic-control crews as work begins on widening busy Merchant Street near the bridge, he said.
E-mail Bill Byrd at bbyrd@timeswv.com.