Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette A lane closure will be in effect during business hours on Shelden Avenue next week as work begins on the walkway leading from Shelden to Lakeshore Drive following the teardown of the parking deck.

By GARRETT NEESE

gneese@mininggazette.com

HOUGHTON — With the parking deck fully down and overhead work complete, crews will begin work on the future look of Lakeshore Drive.

Crews will start next week on the Pewabic Street walkway connecting Shelden Avenue to Lakeshore Drive, City Manager Eric Waara said at Wednesday’s City Council meeting.

The pedestrian walkway and gathering area will be built between Michigan Made and the Print Shop, where the old deck entrance on Shelden Avenue was located.

The walkway will have a gateway arch, overhead lighting, plantings, and more, and will lead to a sidewalk through the parking lot to stairs down to the trail, the city said in a May letter on the Lakeshore Drive project.

That section of Shelden Avenue will have a lane closure for several days next week, Waara said. It will be reopened each day for traffic at the end of business hours, provided there’s no open hole in the road, Waara said.

From there, crews will continue working west. Part of the quarter-turn ramp on Lakeshore will come down; the rest will be left for use as a retaining wall.

On the other side of the project, parking on the eastern end of the east lot will be opened next week, Waara said.

“They’ve got a couple of strategic concrete pours they need to make, and then they’re going to move the fence, and we’re going to put some striping down and open up that east side of the lot by the library to increase the amount of parking down there,” Waara said. “But we’re also going to get the word out to a lot of businesses too, that people coming to work in the morning, it would be a great place for them to open up the rest of the lot — and Shelden Avenue in some cases — for their customers and visitors.”

Businesses are also progressing in their adaptations to the new space, Waara said. Thursday, the KBC said on its Facebook page the concrete had been poured on its extended deck. It also plans to create another outdoor seating section with a bar at street level on Lakeshore, which will be connected to the upper portion by a stairwell. The Den is also building its outdoor dining section, Waara said.

Waara also gave a status update on repairs to the Portage Street parking deck near U.P. Engineers & Architects, which was damaged earlier this last month by a vehicle that suffered a mechanical failure. Guardrails are expected to be installed this week, with the deck returning to service late this week or early next week.