by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
It was a long time coming, but a one-time dream will become a reality sometime in October.
On a unanimous vote, 5-5, the Sartell City Council approved calling for plans and specifications for the ambitious project known as “Fourth Avenue South.” For many years, the council and others in Sartell saw the need for a south-north connector road at Fourth Avenue. That road ran past the Sartell Police Department and then petered in a kind of no-man’s land of fields and wetlands.
At a public hearing at the Dec. 13 council meeting, Sartell City Engineer Mike Nielson outlined what the project will entail.
Once the connective road is completed, it will run on the south side from the fifth leg of the roundabout at Heritage Drive (very near Hwy. 15, across from Epic Center) to Fourth Street S. (north of the police department). The two-lane, 42-foot-wide road (with middle left-turning lane) will be 0.7 miles long. There will be a 10-foot bituminous walking-biking trail constructed along the west side of the road and room enough for a possible paved sidewalk sometime in the future on the east side. Nielson noted the road could be widened into a four-lane configuration, although such a need, he added, would not come to be for 30-40 years, based on current projections.
SWB & Associates will be the engineer for the project, estimated to cost about $4,123,000. That includes right-of-way purchase costs of $340,000, water-main costs of $578,000 and sewer-line costs of $194,000. About $3,191,000, the lion’s share, would pay for the prep work, dredging, surfacing, pedestrian trail, lighting and other related costs.
The local share of the costs would be about $873,000, Nielson said, with federal funds paying a larger portion and property assessments totaling perhaps as much as $2.3 million. The parcels of property assessed would be those now owned by JK Storage, two areas of land owned by American Iron and Metal, and a smaller parcel owned by Craig and Jessie Cash. The assessments would be based on per-foot frontage along the road.
Construction would begin in the summer and end sometime in October. An assessment hearing would be held after the project is completed, probably in November. There may well be adjustments made to some of the assessments at that time.
Because there are extensive wetlands in the roadway area, about 3.4 acres of them, the road will have to be designed in a kind of curve shape to avoid disrupting the wetlands. Several permits will have to be acquired, including some from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the Minnesota Department of Health.
Nielson said the road could easily accommodate 15,000 vehicles per day.
Sartell City Engineer Mike Nielson
