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DOT Details Highway 42 Rebuild

Sister Bay will be calling on Sven the Goat to help people navigate detours during next year’s troublesome but much needed improvements to State Highway 42.

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“We’ve started a project this year called Seeking Sven,” said Paige Funkhouser, coordinator of the Sister Bay Advancement Association. “Sven will be used from now until the construction is done. We will be following Sven through Sister Bay. Something that will attract people into the community is vital.”

The village decided it needed to conduct its own detour efforts for the planned reconstruction of Highway 42 next year and into 2015 because the standard Wisconsin Department of Transportation detour route would send people away from Sister Bay rather than into it.

“The village is working very conscientiously with the business community and recognizes it’s in the village’s best interest to come up with other detour plans,” Funkhouser said.

On its end, the DOT has already committed to making the highway reconstruction as painless as possible.

“We’re doing our best to minimize our impact on the village, but we also have to try to get this thing done in one construction season,” Jeremy Ashauer, the DOT’s manager for this project, said at a May 29 community meeting held in Sister Bay. “We’re going to do our best to get in and out of here as quickly as possible.”

Taking the economics of the region into account, the DOT has decided to hold off on the bulk of the work until after the busy summer season.

“We would be looking at starting in July [2014] on the Highway 57 work and then move on to Highway 42 work after Labor Day,” Ashauer said. “That is really not standard construction. There are some challenges, doing things like concrete paving in colder weather. That will mean some increased costs.”

He added that DOT has also agreed to open the roads for Fall Fest weekend and then have the roads open by Memorial Day 2015 and all work completed by mid-June.