Hwy 42 Construction Timeline Outlined

Egg Harbor Village Administrator Megan Sawyer shows details of the upgrades along state Highway 42 downtown that will start this spring. Photo by Craig Sterrett

The crowd was smaller and quieter for the informational, preconstruction meeting on the downtown “core” part of the project than the one that preceded the first phase of Egg Harbor’s upgrades along state Highway 42.

With fewer than 30 people in the audience at the Kress Pavilion, Village Administrator Megan Sawyer introduced the utility contractors and general contractor and encouraged business owners to contact her or the contractors as concerns arise. She provides weekly updates at villageofeggharbor.org/hwy42.

Downtown Core

In attendance at the March 7 meeting were contractors for Wisconsin Public Service and Steve Navarre, Project Manager for Vinton Construction, which won the $3.99 million contract for sidewalk-widening and replacement, addition of on-street parking, storm-sewer repairs, streetlight replacement, installation of tree wells and grates and removal and replacement of curb and gutter.  

Navarre said the Egg Harbor project resembles one he oversaw for Vinton in Fish Creek four years ago – from juggling schedules with utility contractors to replacing or removing retaining walls.

Navarre said his crews will start with storm-sewer installation between Hwy 42 and Church Street and then start from the north with sidewalk-removal, curb-and-gutter replacement and some storm-sewer connections and repairs. 

They will work along one side of the highway at a time, thereby keeping half the sidewalks open and parking on one side of the street accessible. Navarre said when possible, he plans to get two crews working to expedite progress.

Sawyer said that WisDOT plans to arrive in the village to start its repaving and improvements on Hwy 42 by Memorial Day. She said there’s a possibility that the core project will be completed – other than landscaping, tree-planting and some finishing touches – by June 28. An Oct. 21 restart date is on the schedule in case that’s needed. 

Hwy 42 will be closed and detoured to thru-traffic during the highway repaving operations. 

Some brief utility outages will be necessary at specific downtown locations. Managers from M.J. Electric said they are more than two weeks ahead of schedule in burying utilities. They said they will give business owners and residents advance notice before two- to three-hour outages at specific locations when they switch from overhead utilities to buried utilities.

Engineering consultant Mike Simon said contractors will make arrangements to allow deliveries to businesses. He said if a business has two driveways, contractors will work on one of those at a time. If a business has just one driveway, they’ll work on half of the entrance at a time. Residents in the construction zone will have a parking spot available while their driveway entrances are rebuilt and curing for about seven days, he said.

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation was scheduled to hold a meeting about the project at 1:30 pm Tuesday, March 19 at the Sevastopol Town Office along Highway 57 in Institute. Full details appear at tinyurl.com/m86u9hhm.