Brookfield trustees on May 11 are expected to approve adding about 400 feet of pavement in the Hollywood section to the 2020 street improvement program, which already is in full swing.
Several streets in Hollywood both north and south of the railroad tracks are slated for widening and resurfacing this spring, and trustees now are expected to give the nod to widen and repave two 200-foot sections of Parkview Avenue between Rosemear and Woodside avenues originally left out of the plan.
Trustees at their committee of the whole meeting on April 27, however, agreed it made sense to improve those sections now – when construction crews are already mobilizing in the area – instead of waiting a couple of years and doing it as a spot improvement.
“It seems like it’d more practical to do it right there where we’re in the area rather than going back in a year or two do this,” said Village President Kit Ketchmark.
Trustee Michael Garvey said it also made sense to do the work now, when neighborhood residents are already being inconvenienced by construction.
“The residents in that area are facing all that construction right now, and then two, three years from now you want to come back and do this project, you’re inconveniencing the same set of residents again,” Garvey said. “Make this the spring where they’re inconvenienced and then you don’t have to worry about it going forward.”
The cost to widen the sections of Parkview Avenue by three feet, mill the concrete pavement and overlay it with asphalt is expected to cost about $123,800. Work would also include replacing deteriorated sections of sewer and drainage structures, replacing all of the curb and gutter, installing handicapped-accessible sidewalk ramps at corners, replacing driveway aprons disturbed by construction and restoring the parkways with sod.
Other than those two small sections of roadway, every other street in the Hollywood section of the village has been improved in the past 20 years. The short stretches of concrete roadway are original to that part of town, close to 100 years old.
But the streets, which have never been heavily trafficked through the decades did not make the cut for replacement when the village did its street survey in 2013. That survey was used to determine what streets would be repaved using a $22 million bond issue approved by voters in 2016. The sections of Parkview Avenue, which have been patched over time, were rated as “fair,” according to Village Engineer Derek Treichel.
This year marks the fifth year of side street improvements using the referendum funds. The program likely has just one more year to go before the funds run out. The 2020 program, approved earlier this year, focused on about 1.8 miles of street on the north end of the village, principally in Hollywood.
The village board awarded the $4.8 million construction contract in March to J. Nardulli Concrete Inc.
While the new work will add some expense to the overall project, the money will come from bond proceeds that remain available for road improvements. The expense will not be paid from the village’s general operating fund.
