Central, Parker streets paved

DPW director: about five working days to finish; Main Street intersection to be last section completed

By Owen Boss

GARDNER — City officials expressed confidence Thursday that paving will be completed soon on the remaining milled roads in the heart of the city. The city’s downtown business district got its first taste of fresh pavement as pavers moved down Central and Parker streets, an encouraging development for drivers that have been dealing with milled roads and a new traffic system. Dane Arnold, director of the Department of Public Works and coordinator of the project, said paving will most likely continue downtown today with the completion of Pleasant Street, and workers will avoid the busy Main Street intersection until the end of the project. “They are not touching this intersection,” said Mr. Arnold. “That will end up being one of the last things we are going to do.” Although the project could be completed sometime next week, Mr. Arnold said the ability to pave depends heavily on weather conditions. “The goal is, if we had probably five working days we could finish this,” said Mr. Arnold. “But that is full working days, so for every rainout we have to add another day. We are hoping to be out of here by Wednesday or Thursday.” Mr. Arnold said the actual paving of the road is a fairly quick process because of the experienced work crew and top-of-the-line equipment. “They come down with the trucks and the trucks dump into the actual paver which acts as a screed and it screeds the asphalt across the surface of the road,” said Mr. Arnold. “We’re hoping to have Central completely finished by four or five o’clock this afternoon.” When the project was drafted, Mr. Arnold said it was his intention to keep one lane of traffic open while the paving project moved through the highly trafficked downtown area, but decided to close Central Street completely because of careless drivers. “We are not going to open it up until this is done because we are finding that people are cutting across the fresh pavement,” said Mr. Arnold. “We are going to keep it closed, finish the road and get out of there.” oboss@thegardnernews.com

Appeared on Page 1 on 8/15/2008 (Vol. 206 No. 193)