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MDOT provides parking update

Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette Rob Tervo, Michigan Department of Transportation manager for the Ishpeming Service Center, speaks during the Keweenaw Alliance breakfast Wednesday. Hancock City Manager Mary Babcock and Houghton City Manager Eric Waara, seated, also presented.

HOUGHTON — It won’t be as bad as last year.

After a 2021 that saw simultaneous construction on Townsend Drive and lane closures on the Portage Lake Lift Bridge, this summer promises to be less frustrating for drivers, said Rob Tervo, manager of the Michigan Department of Transportation Service Center in Ishpeming. Tervo, along with Hancock City Manager Mary Babcock and Houghton City Manager Eric Waara, spoke at Wednesday’s Keweenaw Alliance Breakfast Wednesday.

Tervo reviewed upcoming projects in the three-county area. The largest impact locally will be felt with the second half of work on U.S. 41 in Houghton, involving College Avenue and a portion of Montezuma Avenue to Isle Royale Street.

“We intentionally did the Townsend Avenue project last year because it would be a little bit further away from the bridge project,” Tervo said. “And we split that project out into two years to try to stay out of most of the time Tech was in session.”

One lane of College Avenue will remain open at all times for northbound travel in the $9.4 million project. Southbound highway travel will be rerouted to Sharon Avenue and MacInnes Drive. (Most locals will probably find workarounds on residential roads, Waara acknowledged.)

Because of the higher traffic, stoplights will be put in temporarily at Military and Gundlach roads, Waara said.

The section of M-26 heading to Lake Linden will also see work. Between Tamarack and Dollar Bay there will be a paver placed surface seal. A milling and resurfacing project in Lake Linden will include sidewalk upgrades.

In Baraga County, there will be a $4.2 million resurfacing and patching project on U.S. 41 from Delene’s Junction to Tioga. Resurfacing will also occur at the carpool lot at Delene’s Junction and near the entrance of the Baraga County Road Commission.

While recent years have been packed with repairs stemming from the Father’s Day Flood, coming years are lighter on projects, Tervo said.

Elevators will be replaced on the Portage Lake Lift Bridge next year in a $2.7 million project. The elevators, which date back to the construction of the bridge, have become increasingly harder to maintain, Tervo said.

Both are on the northbound lane, which will require some lane closures on the right side, Tervo said.

“The good news is we’re not ripping up the lanes,” he said. “We’re just We’re just replacing elevators on the sides, so we have a little bit more flexibility as to what we can make our contractors do as far as scheduling their work.”

A new bridge will be installed on M-26 over the Silver River in Keweenaw County. One lane has been closed due to the deteriorating condition of one of the walls.

“We really wish we could have had that under construction this year,” he said. “But due to funding a bit and then environmental classification for some endangered species, it’s going to take a bit longer.”

Tervo also answered questions from the crowd. For now, he said, there won’t be any increase to the speed limit on U.S. 41 north from Marquette.

MDOT had been instructed to raise a certain number of miles of roadway to 65 miles per hour and 75.

“U.S. 41 between Marquette and Houghton didn’t make that cut just because of the terrain, and for some degree, the access,” he said. “…We’ll be evaluating as time goes on how that worked.”

Asked why they didn’t include the stretch between Crystal Falls and Covington, Tervo didn’t disagree.

“We came up to our legislative amount and we stopped,” he said. “It’s the best answer I’ve got.”

Waara and Babcock also reported on projects going on in the two cities. Hancock’s biggest project for the year is the business and technology park. The city received a $2.7 million federal EDA grant for the $3.4 million project, along with a $75,000 site readiness grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corp. The project is in the final design phases and is being submitted to the EDA for review. The goal is to have the project out of bid in late April or early May, with construction from June to November.

The city will also finish its final FEMA project from the 2018 flood, the $300,000 repairs of the Maasto Hiihto trails. FEMA will pay about $220,000, while the state will pay 25% of the remainder. Work will begin this summer and be completed this fall.

“It is just going to rebuild the trail to what it was before, but we did some remediation, so it shouldn’t happen again if there’s ever another flood,” Babcock said.

The biggest project on Houghton’s docket is the pending demolition of the Lakeshore Drive parking deck. A landscape architect is developing concepts of what Lakeshore Drive might look like without the deck, Waara said. The city will also try to revise the parking system downtown to make better use of the space.

“We have a lot of parking, we just don’t use it very well, because we’ve had the easy button there for so long,” he said.

The city’s pier project will be worked on this summer and the fall. Construction was pushed back due to delays with AT&T locating cables crossing the Portage Canal.

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