Paving Begins on Market Street in Downtown as Part of Kittanning Revitalization

by David Croyle

The Downtown Kittanning Revitalization took another major step this week to completion as paving crews moved in Monday night to prepare Market Street for a new road surface.

The work is contracted by PennDOT to Tresco Paving in Delmont.

Bill Braun, partner with Senate Engineering, speaking as Engineer for Kittanning Borough, said the crew rolled in Monday evening to being the project. The first part involves removing the asphalt down to the base of the street. This will take most of this week to complete because of changes that were made to the plans.

“PennDOT had a slight change in the scope of work. They are going to add some more binder with some paving fabric which will help eliminate some of the cracking in the future. So that is probably going to add a couple of days to the project.”

Braun felt the new road surface should be complete before the end of next week, depending on weather conditions the next few days.

The paving schedule for Market Street, unlike other schedules in the past, have the paving crews working in the night instead of the day.

“All work is to be done between 6PM and 6AM. That will all be night work. I think they generally do that to help with traffic control and inconvenience for the motorists.”

Tresco flaggers were located on each street corner last night and permitted traffic to use one lane at a time in order to move traffic through town. Many drivers stopped to ask questions and flaggers were friendly to provide assistance.

Braun said that M & B Services will continue to do their work on preparing for signal pole installation during the day. He does not feel that will conflict at all with Tresco’s workers.

Even as pavers are working on Market Street, Braun’s attention was on the side streets of Jefferson and McKean. He said there is a possibility that those streets will be paved sometime in September.

“We are currently designing those (streets) and in the process of submitting our final design to PennDOT for approval. Our goal is to have the paving done late this year. All I can say is we will see how it goes. We don’t want to go too late because of the weather conditions, but we will try to do it here as soon as possible. That would be North and South Jefferson, North and South McKean, and South Grant. As long as there aren’t any delays in PennDOT’s review process, I think there is time for the advertising and time for the contractor to get the work completed.”

For now, Tresco representatives urged caution when attempting to drive through town during the next few days. Machinery digging up the road surface can cause small stones to be thrown during the process.

The good news is that Kittanning will soon have another street paved… with more on the way.

 

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