Long awaited $2.8 million renovation is expected to be completed
in January of 2007
Morgan Hill – A $2.8 million project to reconstruct Depot Street between Main Avenue and Fifth Street is now underway.
Crews began ripping up the road Monday and installing new storm drain pipes. When they’re done with that, they’ll work on building colorful sidewalks and new gutters, said Yat Cho, an engineer and project manager for the City of Morgan Hill.
The Depot Street makeover is intended to attract new businesses to Morgan Hill’s downtown corridor. The project is meant to correspond with a major renovation of Third Street, a project that’s on hold pending approval of a federal grant the city applied for in June.
The Depot Street project also includes a newly paved roadway, public art displays, decorative benches, a bike rack and new trash cans.
City officials expect the long-awaited work to be completed in January 2007.
Until then, traffic and parking will be disrupted. Street-side parking on Depot Street won’t be allowed, Cho said. Traffic will also be restricted to one lane, south-bound.
The local farmers’ market, which runs Saturdays from 9:30am-1pm at the Morgan Hill Caltrain station on Depot Street, by the corner of Third Street, will remain in business at its current location through the beginning of the road work. (The market is expected to close, however, for the winter in late November. It will reopen in May 2007.)
A $2.6 million federal grant from the California Metropolitan Transportation Committee is covering most of the Depot Street renovation costs. The rest of the money comes from the city’s storm drain fund, accounting for $660,000 of project’s budget, and the Morgan Hill Redevelopment Agency, accounting for $470,000.
While construction is off to a good rumbling start, Cho said there’s a chance rainy weather could delay some of the work as autumn and winter take hold.
“It’s a big concern,” Cho said.
But he’s mostly positive. The city has great faith in the work crew.
San Jose-based Wattis Construction was awarded the job. The company recently finished a road widening project on Tennant Avenue.
In other news, the Public Works Department’s $1 million annual road maintainence project is nearly finished, ending a three-week ballet of jackhammers and parking problems on a number of city streets. The project began in late August.
All “crack sealing” work is now finished, said Mori Struve, deputy director of Public Works. There’s still a bit of pavement resurfacing to take care of, he said, on Fifth Street and Peak Avenue. But it’s expected to wrap up in the next couple weeks. All miscellaneous details such as painting the roads, installing traffic signal detection loops and raising manhole covers will also be done by the end of September.
DEPOT STREET PROJECT
What’s going on: Workers are installing
colorful sidewalks, new gutters, smoother
pavement, street benches, public art displays
and a bike rack on Depot Street between
Main Avenue and Fifth Street.
Cost: $2.8 million
Contractor: Wattis Construction, San Jose
Funding source: $2.6 million comes from a
California Metropolitan Transportation
Committee grant; the rest comes from the
Morgan Hill Redevelopment Agency and the
city’s storm drain fund.
Completion: The target date for completion is
January 2007.
Questions: For more information, call project
manager Yat Cho at the Morgan Hill Public
Works Department at (408) 776-7337 ext. 231.
Tony Burchyns covers Morgan Hill for The Times. Reach him at
(408) 779-4106 ext. 201 or tburchyns@morganhilltimes.
