If you live on Selborne Road in Riverside between Longcommon and York roads or on Kent Road west of Selborne, gird yourselves for 45 days of bother.
On Sept. 1 the village board awarded a $903,000 contract to Cicero-based M&J Asphalt Paving Inc. to reconstruct those roadways from the ground up, which will mean limited access to driveways during the day and possibly relocating cars overnight if you want to avoid having to move them every morning before works starts.
“There will be disturbance during the project,” said Orion Galey of Christopher B. Burke Engineering Ltd., the village’s engineer.
Work is expected to begin in mid-September and wrap up by the end of October. Residents in the rea will receive notices about the specific nature of the work and disruptions they’ll face about a week before construction starts, said Galey.
The streets to be improved are concrete, and the plan is to remove the concrete streets completely and rebuild them as standard asphalt streets. Sections of curb and gutter will also be replaced.
As concrete is removed the contractor will back fill that area with stone to keep them passable. There are bound to be times during construction that access to the street will be limited and vehicles will not be able to enter or exit driveways while construction is going on during the day.
The contractor will place ramps at drive aprons to give vehicles access at night but will remove them when work starts in the morning, meaning it may make more sense for homeowners to relocate their vehicles overnight.
Galey said the village is likely to designate nearby streets for overnight parking to accommodate the affected residences.
When curbs, gutters and driveway aprons are being poured there may be periods of a week or more that driveways won’t be accessible at all.
“Cars will have to be relocated for a majority of the project,” Galey said.
The project is being funded by a combination of motor fuel taxes and money earmarked for Riverside in the state’s Rebuild Illinois capital plan. M&J Asphalt Paving Inc. was actually the second-lowest bidder for the work.
The lowest of three bids received by the village was for $885,000 from Lake Zurich-based Chicagoland Paving Contractors Inc. Galey recommended the village go with M&J Asphalt Paving in a memo to Riverside Public Works Director Dan Tabb in August, saying Chicagoland Paving Contractors failed to meet affirmative action requirements for the work it did for the village in constructing the main commuter parking lot in 2019.
Sidewalks, crosswalks for Turtle Park, Big Ball Park
The construction contract awarded to M&J Asphalt Paving also includes a smaller project approved by the village board to make Turtle Park and Big Ball Park more accessible.
Presently there is only one marked crosswalk to Turtle Park, across Nuttall Road, and none near the ballfield at Big Ball Park. The improvement will include three high-visibility crosswalks. One will span Longcommon Road to provide direct access from the west to Turtle Park, while the Nuttall crosswalk will be more visibly marked. A third crosswalk will connect Turtle Park to Big Ball Park across Shenstone Road, which runs between the two green spaces.
In addition, a new sidewalk will connect the Shenstone Road crosswalk to the backstop area of the ball field in Big Ball Park. A new sidewalk will also meander across the north end of Turtle Park, connecting all three crosswalks. The route of the sidewalk was designed so no trees need to be removed.
New ADA ramps at the crosswalks will be cast iron instead of the standard plastic ramps most often used. While that increased the cost of the project by about $4,000, trustees felt the cast iron ramps were much more durable and looked better. It’s likely the village will seek to swap out plastic ADA ramps for cast iron ones in future projects where crosswalks are involved.
The $100,000 park project is being funded through operating funds freed up when the village decided to use a state grant for green space improvements for expenditures related to its third-party tree service contractor, D. Ryan Tree and Landscape Service.
