Batavia road construction progresses

The construction work on Batavia’s Fifth Street should be completed by the end of the year.

According to Batavia village administrator Bob Stewart, the construction project, which commenced in early September, is expected to be completed by Dec. 31.

“We are hoping to have it done even before the start of the new year 2009,” Stewart said. “But I really think that the end of the year would be the very latest.”

The Batavia village is putting in a brand new sanitary sewer system to better service the homes on Fifth Street. Currently, those residences are serviced off long lateral sewer lines that run off to the side streets.

In addition, the $606,449 construction project will include a complete rebuild of the stretch of roadway from East Main to the bottom of the Old State Route 32 hill, new sidewalks, and a new curb.

To help pay for the project, the village received a grant from the Ohio Public Works Commission (what used to be called the Issue 2 Fund), which they apply for every year, Stewart said.

This year, the grant was approved and the Ohio Public Works Commission gave the village a 49 percent match of the project's total cost of $606,449.

The grant will help pay for $350,000 of the project, and the village will pay $364,000 from local revenue, the administrator said.

The construction improvement project is contracted out to Sunesis Construction, which is based out of West Chester.

Stewart said that one of the main reasons the project needed to be done is because of the high volume of traffic that utilizes that portion of Fifth Street on a daily basis.

"Fifth Street was originally built as a residential street and ultimately became part of the state route," Stewart said. "But it was never designed to handle the amount of traffic it takes now."

Stewart said that approximately 6,000 vehicles use Fifth Street every day, which includes not only cars, but heavy service vehicles and school buses as well.

"So the heavy-duty traffic is why we are doing the complete rebuild," Stewart said.