Ridge Avenue, home to many off-campus Northwestern students, will undergo a massive rehabilitation next year.
The $6.1 million project includes installation of a new roadway surface, curbing and a new relief sewer between Howard Street and Clark Street, about a two-mile stretch. The state will begin looking for construction companies next month, and the project is expected to be completed by the end of 2008.
McCormick senior Will Briley, who lives on Ridge Avenue, said he was concerned about the construction because of the amount of roadwork that is already going on in Evanston.
“If they do one street at a time it’s bearable, but when they’ve already got so much going on, it won’t even be worth having a car anymore,” Briley said. “It’ll just be faster to walk.”
The city took control of the roadway from the state last year, but the state will contribute 80 percent of the cost of upgrading the roadway. Because the roadway is deteriorating so rapidly, the city fast-tracked the project and approved the design just a year after the design process began.
To prepare for the rehabilitation, the city has updated and repaired water mains along Ridge Avenue. It also recently completed the Ridge Avenue Signal Improvement Project, a $3 million federally funded project that replaced traffic signal equipment at 12 intersections and coordinated signals at 21 locations.
McCormick junior Andrew Cuming said the construction shouldn’t affect him too much even though he has a car on campus. Cuming lives at Ridge Avenue and Noyes Street, about a mile from the affected areas of the project, so he can easily take alternate routes, he said.
“It’s still part of Ridge so it’s definitely a useful road, but all it really means is that I have to go another way or use another street a couple of blocks away,” Cuming said. “It really only adds another minute or so onto my trip.”
Communication senior Govind Kumar, who now lives at Ridge Avenue and Davis Street, lived on Emerson Street last year, also near construction. He had only recently heard about the construction project, but said he doesn’t really walk down Ridge much.
“The thing that could bother me would be the noise,” said Kumar, who lives on the first floor of his building. “It obviously is kind of a hassle, but I guess what needs to be done needs to be done.”
Gas company Nicor is expected to begin replacing and repairing its older gas mains and services in the coming months.
The street construction project will be advertised for construction by the Illinois Department of Transportation in November. Once the contractor has been hired, a public open house to explain the construction will be held in January or February.
Reach Annie Martin at [email protected].
