Engineering designs for the Industrial Park Road improvement project, which were supposed to be completed by mid-summer, have a new deadline: partial completion sometime this month.
“The schedule was extremely ambitious to begin with,” city of Española Planning Director Cyrus Samii said.
The city is hoping to have the project bid out by the end of the year, which would place the start of construction in springtime 2009, Samii said.
Souder Miller and Associates is the engineering firm working on the project. Project Manager Roy Maestas said the project is already through 60 to 70 percent of the preliminary design stage.
“Instead of just looking at the road and deciding how wide it will be and where the curvature will be, we’re looking at a higher level of detail,” he said.
Maestas said the final design should be 95 percent complete by Dec. 4, with final plans and specifications turned in at the end of that month.
“As we discussed things with all the major stakeholders, we decided a lot more time was needed to address their concerns,” Maestas said,
Those stakeholders include the Española School District, which has a middle school on the road; Rio Arriba County, which has an office complex on the road; and the National Guard armory, Maestas said. Among their concerns are drainage issues and access to their properties.
Drainage is currently a problem on the road, Maestas said. Right now, water gathers in a retention pond at Calle de Merced. Since there is no underground drainage system attached to the pond, water overflows directly onto the road, carrying debris to the bottom of the intersection at Paseo de Oñate, he said. All of that debris clogs up storm-sewer grates and the area ends up flooding, he said.
Councilor Chayo Garcia raised concerns in March about early plans to release water through nearby arroyos, previous SUN reports state. Current design plans call for improvements to an underground storm-sewer line that feeds into the Rio Grande. That line will also be connected to the retention pond, Maestas said.
Plans also include a left-turn holding lane with a raised median at the intersection of Industrial Park Road and Paseo de Oñate, Maestas said.
Souder Miller estimates the project will cost $4 million. The city has approximately $3 million secured, including $2 million from Gov. Bill Richardson’s Road Improvement initiative, $641,000 that was originally set aside for improvements to Transit Mix Road, and an additional $244,000 from general state improvement funds, Samii confirmed.
Another $250,000, provided by the state for work on North McCurdy Road, might also be reallocated to Industrial Park Road, Samii said.
Mayor Joseph Maestas said the $250,000 was insufficient to cover McCurdy Road work. The City Council will discuss whether or not to move the funding at a workshop Oct. 20.
The city will also apply for more state funding, around $250,000 worth, at the beginning of 2009, Samii said.
The city hoped to bring down the cost of the Industrial Park Road project by reusing its current asphalt, he said. However, engineers have since sampled the asphalt and determined it to be unusable, Samii said.
Roy Maestas said to limit costs, the project will likely be broken into a base bid with optional additives.
“Our task is to determine what function we can leave out and still make requirements,” he said.
The increasing cost of supplies and fuel is also a concern, Roy Maestas said.
“There’s always that chance because the state of the economy,” he said.
Samii said it is difficult to predict the escalation of prices. But he hopes that contractors already working on the state’s incoming Highway 84/285 project will be willing to add Industrial Park Road at a reasonable price, he said.