Published: December 05, 2008 12:35 am            

Final Connector construction contract bid

For four-lane roadway from Haymond Street to interchange ramps

FAIRMONT — The final roadway construction contract for the Gateway Connector Highway was officially bid this week.

Danny Donlin Jr., District 4 area construction engineer for the West Virginia Division of Highways, said the low bidder will likely be awarded sometime next week.

The contract, which is No. 7 in the overall project, will be the construction of the four-lane roadway from Haymond Street up to the interchange ramps on the top of the hill in the East Side work zone.

The low bidder was Kanawha Stone Co., and the bid came in at $17.8 million, Donlin said. He added that it has a completion date set for late October 2010 and will likely be started in about a month.

And while this contract will be the last leg of roadway construction, Donlin said the project still has one more contract, which will be the construction of a welcome center and parks and recreation center. He said that contract is expected to be advertised for bids in late January or early February and will cost around $3 million.

In addition, the two contracts that were recently under construction have come to a halt for the winter and will resume when the weather warms up.

The DOH will soon be starting Contract 8, though, which was recently awarded to Kanawha Stone and encompasses the project from Columbia Street to Haymond Street, Donlin said. That contract cost $11.7 million and also has a completion date of October 2010.

Along with that contract, the DOH has also proposed a detour, which will close the lower portion of State Street from near the High Level Bridge and Merchant Street to Haymond Street to traffic for about the next two years.

Donlin said this plan has not been finalized yet, and will only be implemented if necessary.

“We are still working out the details of the detour. It’s still not a done deal,” he said. “We probably won’t install the detour until there is some benefit to the construction. If they are coming in to demolish houses and traffic can still be maintained on State Street, we won’t reroute traffic on the detour.”

Fairmont City Manager Jim Snider said the city is waiting on the DOH to figure out the timeline for the detour and has no objections to the proposal submitted by the DOH.

E-mail Mallory Panuska at mpanuska@timeswv.com.

        

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