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Jackson Street portion of 231 project will last into 2025, mayor says
We’ve survived the Putnam County Fair and the fair parade. County students are back in school. DePauw University students won’t be far behind.
Yet construction work continues in the heart of Greencastle, and because of a couple of problems, the portion of the U.S. 231 project from the railroad tracks north is expected to linger into 2025, Mayor Lynda Dunbar told the City Council at its August meeting.
Rieth Riley Construction workers started putting down blacktop last week along the west and south sides of the courthouse square, where curb work got under way Monday afternoon.
“The goal is to get the downtown and Jackson Street back open to relieve some of the traffic on our side streets,” Mayor Lynda Dunbar said, noting that from Vine Street to Franklin Street, there is asphalt and beginning this week, workmen “should start putting curbs and sidewalks in.”
“It’ll get done this year, they tell me,” the mayor said. “Then we’ll start this fun all over again in 2025.”
Work remaining at the railroad crossing on U.S. 231 for next year includes putting in a new water line that will close that Jackson Street portion of the road for possibly 40 days.
The sewer line problem that developed during recent construction and an issue with Frontier Communications not moving its lines promptly have scuttled the overall 231 schedule.
“I was really optimistic in the beginning that they would get this project finished up,” Dunbar said. “There are not as many things that have to happen on Jackson Street. It will be much more manageable.”
The Washington Street work area near City Hall has been compounded by the failure of Frontier, an internet provider, to move its lines out of the right of way to facilitate progress of the project.
“Frontier has yet to clear their lines, creating a lot of havoc,” Mayor Dunbar said, noting that its inability or refusal to get its lines moved is causing a problem that is “going to INDOT higher-ups really quick.”
All Frontier’s work “was supposed to have been done in 2023,” Dunbar noted.
INDOT or city workers “can’t just go in there and cut their lines,” the mayor said, adding that “hopefully someone with authority” will find a solution.
It isn’t the first time local officials have had issues with Frontier and its lines. The county has cut a few of them because they were just left unburied at the bottom of ditches where the county was working. Frontier has gone as far as suing the county in the aftermath.
Frontier lines were also involved in a recent accident just north of Greencastle where a truck bed was inadvertently raised, caught the communication lines and pulled them down. Authorities contacted Frontier during the accident clean-up but nobody showed up and city workers ended up zip-tying the lines up to get them out of the roadway.
Meanwhile, explaining that he had seen on social media how the town of Avon posted about a problem working with a company that wasn’t moving its lines as needed on a U.S. 36 project, Councilman Vincent Aguirre suggested making the Frontier issue more public.
“Maybe we can publically shame them,” he suggested.
Mayor Dunbar also told the Council of the city’s intent to aggressively go after Community Crossing funds, which are available twice a year via INDOT. The city has already applied this year for $1.5 million in funding to do an overhaul of Washington Street between Wood Street and Percy Julian Drive past Greencastle High School. That area has been repaved numerous times but the asphalt roadway hasn’t stood up to heavy bus traffic and more.
“I want to go after Community Crossings dollars every time we can,” the mayor reasoned. “It is $1.5 million and we can take areas and do the work that needs to be done. That whole Washington Street area would see new sidewalks, pavement, curbs and a little bit of a facelift there.
“With Community Crossings and some other things, we are going to have to figure out how to get some of these roads fixed,” Dunbar stressed, noting that Albin Pond Road and Shadowlawn Avenue are also high on the list for improvements.
The reason Washington Street was chosen for Community Crossings consideration, Dunbar said, was because it was already poised to be reconstructed, making planning and design easy.
“We have the new high school there and a new road would go great with that. It is not a very good road. It needs to go to the base just like U.S. 231.”