Now that State Street is fully opened, it’s time for the Main event.

In order to provide information and acquire feedback on the planned Main Street construction, a Main Street Reconstruction meeting was held Tuesday night at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum. More than 100 people attended.

The planned Main Street reconstruction project is expected to begin in 2025, and will be divided into three phases:

Phase 1 will take place on Center Street from State to Church. Two blocks on Center will be shut down to allow work to proceed, and should begin in the spring of 2025. There will be two dead-end roads because the intersection of Main and Center will be closed. A couple parking spots might be blocked off to provide drivers room to do a U-turn;

The Main Street reconstruction will be divided into three phases. The first phase will be on Center Street from State to Church streets. Phase two will encompass Main from Center to First Avenue, and the final phase will stretch from First to Third avenues.

Phase 2 will encompass Main Street from Center to First Avenue. There will be a First Avenue sub-phase to allow for traffic. The intersection will be the initial aspect worked on to prevent two intersections from being closed during the entire summer of 2026;

Phase 3 will stretch from First to Third avenues.

Bolton and Menk Principal Engineer Greg Broussard said they want the project to be something residents can be proud of and will draw people downtown. He provided some logistics and stressed the importance of working with business owners to minimize the impact.

“That’s really what we want to get after tonight,” Broussard said. “The meeting for us is to give you information. We need to tell you where we are with the schedule, what we’re thinking about for phasing and what we need from you — we really need to hear feedback. We want to discuss what impacts you see construction may have, and how we can help alleviate those.”

The purpose of the project is a full reconstruction. That includes repaving the roads, a brand new water main and storm sewer, street amenities such as a gateway arch, expanded roadway and pedestrian lighting and expanded parking, which will be parallel and angled.

Broussard estimated bidding to take place in early 2025 with construction to follow that spring. He said the project is expected to last two years, and should be completed at the end of 2026.

Parking is usually a concern for residents and business owners while construction is ongoing, and the familiar Main Street spots will not be available.

“We’re going to have to figure out how to market, how we let your customers, your residents know where to park and how to get to different places,” Broussard said.

With the goal of accommodating pedestrians in mind, two temporary gravel paths will be provided to allow people to walk across Main. The paths might have to be removed for a day to give the construction crew the space to work. One path will be between First and Second avenues, and the other between Second and Third. Broussard said the paths will be placed to line up with the city parking lots.

“That way, they can start to use those parking lots and get to those access paths,” he said. “That’s the general approach for that.”

Maintaining access to all of the downtown businesses is the most critical aspect, Broussard said. There will be fences placed six feet in front of the businesses, separating the area from the construction, which will give people room to walk. He suggested that business owners get some rugs as the work will be dusty.

Addressing the utilities, Broussard said the water main is more than 100 years old.

“It has reached its life expectancy and needs to be replaced,” he said. “That’s the first thing we will be doing is looking at that water main.”

Referencing the State Street project, Broussard said part of that road had three water mains underneath, ranging in size from 4 to 16 inches. With the Main Street water main so old, he said a special process will be used to ensure connection. Once it is secured, the new main will be placed and then another connection established.

“Then we want to test it and make sure the water is clean,” Broussard said. “We want people drinking safe and clean water. That takes three or four days for that testing to go through.”

Then the contractor will be able to connect all of the buildings to the new main. Afterward, the old main will be removed, as it will still be active.

The storm sewer system will be addressed next and expanded. Broussard said it is important to check if business owners have operable sump pumps.

“We are anticipating an increased use of sump pumps if we get into a wet period,” he said. “On State Street, we had 36 days of rain this spring, which was astronomical and people’s sump pumps were running.”

If there are footing drains in front of a business, Broussard said connections will need to be secured and front door access could be closed.

“If your water service for your building comes in right under your front door, we can’t replace it unless we impact the front door, but that will be minimal impact and we will be coordinating with you,” he said. “If it doesn’t impact your business, you will have access.”

Once the utilities are done, pavement work on the road and sidewalks will begin. The slowest potential piece of the project will occur if vaults under the sidewalk are discovered. Broussard said a vault is a basement room which goes out under the sidewalk. He knows of five vaults, such as at the City Centre and Bowman buildings. The contractor will pull the top off of the room, block in and waterproof the wall and then backfill. After the sidewalk is poured over the vault, the walking area will be opened back up.

“That’s going to take several days to do each vault independently,” he said.

Broussard said there might be ways to speed up the construction through coordinating with property and business owners. For example, he said the building between City Centre and Bowman does not have a vault. If the property owner of the middle building does not have customer access from the back, Broussard said they will do the vaults one at a time. That way, there will always be access to the middle building.

“The potential where we can start to think of ways to speed up construction is if that center property owner says ‘I can have access from the back of my building,'” he said. “We’re not telling you you have to. We’re just talking about options. If we can do both vaults at the same time, we can shave at least a week or two off of the construction project just by coordinating that.”

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Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or

lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.