By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — Construction begins next week to overhaul a roughly half-mile stretch of Charles Street, a deteriorated roadway ranked among the worst in the city.
The city will remove and replace about 3,500 feet of roadway from 28th Street near East High School to Parkside Drive near Dunkin’ Donuts. Improvements also include a new multi-use path on the south side of the roadway, sidewalk replacement, new traffic signals, new concrete curb and gutters and a new storm sewer system to help alleviate drainage issues.
“It’s a huge, massive undertaking,” Mayor Tom McNamara said on This Week in the Stateline. “This is not just us repaving the road. This is a total reconstruction of that road.”
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City Council members voted in September to award a $5.53 million contract to Williams Charles Construction to handle rebuilding the roadway.
Charles Street will be closed starting April 3, and detours will be posted. McNamara asked for residents to be patient during the construction, which is expected to last until the fall.
“We know that it’s going to be a lot of traffic going on. We know that there will be detours, but this has so long been needed in our community,” he said. “Literally, (it’s) one of the worst roads in the entire city.”
The road is expected to reopen before the next school year begins, and work on other parts of the project will continue through early fall.
Garbage collection, mail delivery and emergency services will remain unchanged for residents in the area.
The northern detour will reroute traffic to East State Street. The southern detour will send vehicles to Broadway.
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The roadwork is paid for through the city’s 1% infrastructure sales tax, and it is part of a $248 million capital plan that is the largest such five-year plan in city history.
This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on Twitter at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas