Commissioners to add funds to Chesapeake road project

Published 9:52 am Friday, February 25, 2011

CHESAPEAKE — A contract should be awarded soon on the North Huntington Heights project after the Lawrence County Commissioners agreed to contribute $40,000 to the project.

For the past two years, the Village of Chesapeake has tried to get funding for the roadway that goes up to a residential area of the village significantly damaged by slips. Approximately 120 houses are in that area. Above average rainfalls have been cited as the cause for the roadway slides.

The original roadway is gone and the village had to move it onto private property.

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“There is a back road going up there, but it’s narrow,” Chesapeake Mayor Dick Gilpin said.

This summer the village received word that it would get $415,000 in emergency funding from the Ohio Public Works Commission. However the village must come up with 10 percent of the project and had recently asked the county commissioners for the funding.

The plan is to put in a concrete and steel retaining wall in order to put back the 300-foot roadway, which will then be asphalted.

At its Thursday meeting the commissioners agreed to borrow $40,000 from US Bank for 10 years at an interest rate of 4.79 percent — half of that is to be paid back by Chesapeake.

“This is a project that has been a long time coming, four years in the planning,” Gilpin told the commissioners. “The revenue-generating ability is limited in the village. This will finish the worst part of the road.”

The village council is expected to accept bids on March 8 from the five companies that bid on the project. They were Meridian at $434,455; BB&R at $296,350; DGM at $378,344: Boone Coleman at $337,958; and Suburban Main & Construction at $361,511.

The project was estimated to cost $465,000. However Gilpin anticipates it will come in at $405,000 with a starting date in April.

“We need it paved before the asphalt plant closes,” he said. “We should have a great road when it is finished.”