2021 Update #26

It’s August

The Highlights

• Updated milling schedule for central downtown

• Dedication ceremony for Lazarus Park

• Henry at 200 on Sunday

Heat, humidity, thunderstorms—this was a challenging week for our construction crews as they push to wrap up project work by Labor Day weekend.

As you may have seen in my Monday update, that push was temporarily complicated by scheduling issues with the asphalt supplier, delaying the milling and paving of our central downtown roadways. I now have a revised milling schedule, so let’s start this week’s review with those new dates.

Repaving Central Downtown

Milling—the removal of the top layer of roadway asphalt—will now take place next week. And instead of during the day as originally planned, this work will now take place overnight.

Milling will get underway at 6 PM next Tuesday, August 17, in the Marble Works.

Milling—and, following it, paving—will extend from Middle Seymour Street (the back entrance to the Marble Works) along Maple Street (the road that winds around the Marble Works) all the way to the bottom of Printer’s Alley.

Flaggers will manage traffic in and out of the Marble Works during milling.

Up next: Merchants Row and the National Bank of Middlebury’s Seymour Street branch. Those will be milled overnight on Wednesday, August 18, again starting at 6 PM.

And finally, milling of Main Street between Merchants Row and Seymour Street will take place Thursday evening, August 19.

During milling, Merchants Row will be closed to motorists and Main Street will be limited to alternating lane traffic.

Weather permitting, paving of these roadways—as well as Water Street and Printer’s Alley—will take place the week of August 23 and I’ll have that schedule as well as the striping schedule for you in next week’s update.

Your Weekly Construction Update

This week let’s work our way south to north, starting on Merchants Row, where Lafayette began reinstalling the steel railing fence on top of the now-completed south cap wall. With the railing in place, Landshapes reset the ashlar blocks alongside the Battell drive and backfilled the area with top soil.

Landshapes will now plant ornamental grasses behind the ashlar blocks and Lafayette will install the railing fence on the Bourdon building side of the south cap wall, bringing this area close to completion.

No activity this week in Triangle Park, as the Waters crew was busy up on Seymour Street (see below). The fountain will be installed and tested in the next few days.

Moving over to Seymour Street, as shown in the photo below, Waters spent the week installing some 300 feet of new sidewalk and concrete curbing between the National Bank’s Seymour Street branch and the small parking area next to The Depot. This new sidewalk is a significant improvement for pedestrians walking this side of Seymour Street.

Up at the Amtrak rail platform, A&K Strip Forming was back in town on Thursday to install granite curbing behind the platform and two short sections of sidewalk that will connect with the new parking and sidewalk to be installed later this Fall in a Town project.

Earlier in the week, as shown in our next photo, Delta Electric out of Williston was in town to install gooseneck lamps that will illuminate the Elm Street end of the rail platform. The platform canopy will extend south from these lamps and its steel supports will house LED lights.

All of these lights are downward facing and controlled by timers.

As you can see in the following photo, much of the area alongside the rail corridor in the Marble Works neighborhood has now been backfilled and seeded.

Let’s wind up our weekly tour in Lazarus Park, where, on Thursday, Peck Electric installed the lamps on our three new light posts so we will now have light at night in our new park.

You may have noticed that the stephanandra that was planted in Lazarus Park two weeks ago has not taken. Landshapes will replace these and if they, too, do not take, Landshapes will work with the landscape designer to select other plantings for this space.

And finally, Kubricky has milled out the roadway in front of the Gas House so that Waters can install a new sidewalk leading from Lazarus Park into the Marble Works. Please watch your step in this area during the next several days.

Lazarus Park Dedication Ceremony

As I mentioned in a recent update, the Town of Middlebury will hold a special dedication ceremony for our new Lazarus Park on Saturday, August 21, at noon. The park has been named in honor of the Lazarus family, whose department store occupied the site for much of the 20th century and whose civic mindedness contributed so much to Middlebury and to our state.

That ceremony will be followed by an afternoon of musical events, special activities, and giveaways sponsored by our good friends at Neighbors Together and Town Hall Theater. I’ll have more details on the ceremony and the afternoon events in next week’s update.

Henry at 200

Finally, as a reminder, this coming Sunday, August 15, between 11 AM and 2 PM, The Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont will celebrate its founder’s 200th birthday with an all-ages bash worthy of Henry in the Sheldon’s garden and in Cannon Park. Read all about it here.

That’s all for today. See you downtown.

Please keep your comments and questions coming. Send me an email at jgish@townofmiddlebury.org and I’ll try to cover it in my next update.