2021 Update #36

Kubricky Wraps Up Punch List

The Highlights

• Closing out five years of construction

• Last chance to complete Project Survey!

Reading the highlights of the October 26 Selectboard meeting last week I noted that the discussion topics for an upcoming Town-College lunch include housing, child care, and the introduction of e-scooters.

That focus on the future brought home to me that the downtown construction project we’ve lived with for five challenging years is now just another chapter in the town’s 260-year history.

And it’s now time to move on.

Your Weekly Construction Update

Speaking of moving on, the Kubricky crew that has remained in town expects to wrap up its work on the punch list of minor repairs at week’s end.

While some work remains to be done—installing three custom-made fence panels along the Battell driveway, for example—Friday will mark the end of Kubricky’s daily presence in Middlebury for the first time (except for short winter breaks) since Summer 2017.

The VTrans inspection team will remain in the Bourdon building field office to wrap up the paperwork side of the project until Thanksgiving. Among their tasks are organizing documentation for the federal audit of the project and recording the project’s “as-built” data—documenting where the location and materials used for underground infrastructure vary from plan.

To complete its punch list work, this week Kubricky finished sealing the overhead tunnel joints, raised the bases of Main Street light poles to protect them from snow plowing and water infiltration, added some drainage stone at the rail platform, and continued cleaning up the Fifield staging site out on Route 30.

In other construction news, Hutchins has now completed repaving Routes 7, 30, and 125 except for reinstalling some road signs and some minor line striping. Munson has nearly completed construction of a new Town sewer line at the back entrance to the Marble Works and is installing concrete curbing for the new sidewalk that will connect the rail platform to Elm Street.

Don’t Forget the Survey!

Last week VTrans released a community survey that gives you an opportunity to record your thoughts on the downtown construction project.

Thank you if you’ve already taken the time to document your perspective on this historic project in downtown Middlebury. If you haven’t yet, please do! Your take on how the project went and how future construction projects might benefit from the lessons learned in Middlebury are important.

We’ll keep the survey open through next week and then I’ll report out the results in a November update.

The survey comprises some 15 multiple-choice questions with space for comments and should take only a few minutes to complete. You can access 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.