ASHLAND — Construction on an underground bridge along West Main Street is scheduled to start the week after Memorial Day and will close the thruway for three months.
Ashland County commissioners hired Adena Corporation earlier this month for the $998,830 project.
Signs in that area — on the 400 block, between Broad and Race streets — have been posted for a couple weeks, but the work will begin June 3. That section of Main Street will be closed for at least 90 days, according to the contract.
Ashland County Assistant Engineer Ryan Athy said the detour will involve using Race Street and Sandusky Avenue.
Athy said access to Ashland Cemetery will not be affected by construction.
Longterm fix?
Work is expected to wrap by Nov. 1. It involves taking out the old bridge and installing a new one, in the public right-of-way. The public right-of-way happens to be West Main Street.
The longterm solution, however, involves potentially purchasing homes to fix culverts on either end of the bridge located on private property, Ashland City Engineer Shane Kremser has said.
But that plan involves purchasing private property, officials have said.
At one point, the Ashland County Land Reutilization Corporation proposed purchasing three or four houses in that area in order to demolish them and solve an ongoing flooding issue there.
For now, the county and city have partnered on the project to fix what they can — the underground bridge over West Main Street.
The road is an extension of a county road that happens to run through the city, requiring the two governmental entities to partner.
The city, in December 2022, approved a resolution that agreed to provide the county with 15,000 tons of asphalt grindings in return for a funded project.
The county is paying for the project with $436,083 from a combination of American Rescue Plan Act allocation and gas tax funds.
Another $500,000 grant from the Ohio Public Works Commission helped toward the funding.