T-R PHOTOS BY ROBERT MAHARRY West State Street between North 5th Street and North 13th Street is currently closed for Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) mill and overlay work after the Marshalltown city council awarded a contract to Manatt’s at its June 8 meeting, and the work began Monday.

Crews from Manatt’s and their subcontractors have been hard at work on the streets of Marshalltown since Monday as a $1.77 million hot mix asphalt (HMA) street rehabilitation project that will affect a total of 18 sections of road in the community is officially underway.

With the downtown reconstruction project and the Center Street viaduct repairs already in progress, Public Works Director Heather Thomas is excited to see more improvements to Marshalltown’s oft-beleaguered streets, and she said this project kicked off with milling on West State Street between North 5th Street and North 13th Street on Monday.

“There’ll be several Manatt’s crews, and then they’ll have several sub crews. So it would not shock me if there are six or seven crews at any one time working, so we will definitely be spread out throughout the community,” Thomas said. “We have the projects kind of broken up into three quadrants.”

The first is Quadrant 1 — west of Center Street and north of the railroad — with the goal of getting all of the milling, surface patch and inner layer asphalt down there before moving on to the next.

“The top coat of asphalt will come back at a later date after they switch the mix at the plant around,” Thomas said.

Quadrant 2 is an area just south of the Lennox plant, and Quadrant 3 is the Ingledue/Ferner Street area between 6th Street and 1st Avenue. How long each street is closed to traffic will depend on its condition, and Thomas predicted that State Street could sit for as long as two weeks before getting the inner layer.

“If the mill finds a suspect road, we’re gonna move the inner layer paving machine to be as close behind that as possible,” she said.

In addition to the contractor and subcontractors working on the project, the city’s engineering division is “all hands on deck” for the project with long workdays and a hands-on approach planned. Other than a few potential questions for a consultant, city staff intend to oversee all of the engineering work.

With RAGBRAI just over a month away, the city has communicated with Manatt’s that every street involved in this project must be open and drivable the day of the event with plans to pause work for the day on July 22. The overall project completion date is Oct. 30, but considering how quickly Manatt’s came in after the contract was awarded at the June 8 city council meeting, she predicted that they could very easily be wrapped up well ahead of that deadline.

Door hangers have been placed on properties located on the affected streets with instructions not to park on the road while milling and paving are in progress.

“Until you see new asphalt down and the no parking streets are pulled from the terrace areas that they’re putting up, please do not park on the street,” she said. “We are preferring people not to drive on the street, but we’re not telling people they can’t. You are allowed to get in and get to your driveway. However, obviously, if there’s a mill in front of your road there, you’re gonna have to wait until the mill gets by.”

She implored people who don’t live on those streets to stay off of them and find an alternate space.

“We have a ton of streets being worked on, so yes, this is going to be an inconvenience for the public as far as getting around,” Thomas said, noting that some people had called to report as many as three detours in one trip.

Impacted property owners are also temporarily allowed to park in their own front yards.

“We hope everybody will just be patient, let us get through these projects. We have a lot of streets. Well over four miles of streets are getting milled and overlaid, so that’s quite a bit of work here coming up in the next few months,” Thomas said.

Contact Robert Maharry at (641) 753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.