Negaunee continues moving forward

NEGAUNEE -- The city of Negaunee is continuing to move forward.

Downtown Negaunee has been a construction zone since the end of June. Over the summer, construction has consisted of water laterals installation, sewer and water main replacements, storm drain installation, fiber network installation, curb installation, paving, new sidewalks and tree boxes going in.

City Manager Nate Heffron said construction has been going well.

"The weather has been fairly cooperative," he said. "We've only really had one week of bad weather. One thing to know is the project didn't really start until the middle of July."

That choice was made on purpose due to Pioneer Days, he said. He continued saying that the city tried to get away from interfering with any events that might be happening downtown.

"So with that said, groups and organizations that were holding events in Negaunee, we were upfront with them and straightforward, saying 'Hey, you're not going to be able to do a parade down here' or 'You're not going to hold your event down here, we'll do our best to kind of squeeze as much out of the season as we can until they actually break ground. But we might think of alternative locations within the community for you to hold your event.' And that's what we've done," Heffron said. "We've been working hand-in-hand with people, so we think it's been going fairly well. I think they're probably right about where they should be."

Residents and visitors will soon notice pavement going down at the far end of Iron Street near Jackson Mine Park.

"They still got one top course of the upper part of Iron Street (to do) and they're not doing that right now because they want to put all the sidewalks in first," Heffron said. "They don't want to damage that top course of concrete with having big concrete trucks ride up and down it because if you have a heavy vehicle ride on brand new pavement, it has a tendency to cause damage."

Some challenges during the construction, Heffron said, were issues with buildings from taking the sidewalks out.

"A lot of people have to understand that some of these buildings are well over 100 years old, so building practices 100 years ago are not the same as they are today," he said. "So you run into things that people did and in the standards they had back then were different, or maybe no one was watching 100 years ago, there may not have been building codes."

Heffron said every single situation that occurs has to be dealt with.

"And we try to make sure that (what we find) we put back in a better position than what we found, because we don't want to have issues happen in the future because we've disturbed something," he said.

Construction has also led to some discoveries underground.

"One day by the fire hall area, on Division Street, they found a safe underneath the road," Heffron said. "I think everyone was hoping there was a million dollars or maybe a couple of gold bars, but they cut it off and it was full of concrete."

While the project had a busy summer, Heffron said construction will take a pause over the winter.

"The expectation is the streets will all be paved, that's a given. We're pretty close to that. All the sidewalks that are along the streets will be completed," Heffron said. "Now there are some park areas that are in this project that we're hoping the sidewalks will get done in or the concrete work will be done. It's not clear if (that's) all that's going to happen this year and if it doesn't, they'll be easily done next year."

He said the goal is to have sidewalks completed so landscapers can come in and plant everything. Lights will also be up this year.

"That's another thing that will be expected. We're going to be planting our trees here this year as well," Heffron said. "All the furniture and things like that we ordered but it's not going to be placed out this year because our goal for our maintenance plan with this project is that probably 75% of that furniture will be removed from the street in the winter months, chiefly because we have less people downtown. No one generally is sitting downtown on a bench in the middle of winter."

Removing furniture from the street will also help snowplows moving equipment and prevent any damages to the furniture.

As for business during the project, Heffron said business meetings have been held on Thursdays at the ice arena since the beginning of the project.

"At this point, no businesses have come to the meeting, so that tells me that they don't have questions and they're satisfied with what's going on right now," he said. "On the flip side of that, some businesses do have direct contact with me, so if they do ever have an issue, they do reach out."

Scheduling, Heffron said, has been one challenge.

"As long as they tell us what's going on, and our construction folks try to communicate as best as possible. All this is stuff underground, you never know what you're going to hit or come across, so we all try to work together to get the best outcome," he said. "And if we have to stop doing work one day because someone has a bunch of things going on, customers coming in for something, then we'll certainly do that. We're not going to negatively affect their businesses."

For the most part, however, Heffron said businesses have said there hasn't been much of an affect on them. Some, he said, have even seen an increase in business since the project has started.

"The increase is interesting because you think there will be less people down here," Heffron said. "I think it comes down to two reasons."

One, he said, is the city being proactive. The second, people are genuinely curious as to what's going on.

"They're excited to see that something's finally happening downtown," Heffron said. "For years, many people, I'm talking years before I was here, people have been saying someone needs to do something. When are they going to do something? Well, the question is always gonna be who's 'they' and what's 'something?'"

In this case, the "they" is the city government. The "what" is fixing infrastructure.

"We're putting investment into our community, we expect that there's going to be private investment that follows. That's always been proven in many, many communities with this formula," he said. "The other side of that, this project is 80% infrastructure improvement. Improvements that've been needed in downtown for 30 to 40 years or more. Those are now going to be fixed and everything underneath the street. It'll last a lifetime for people in this community."

The other aspect is the "fluffy and fun stuff," Heffron said.

"The parks areas, which attract people to come downtown. This methodology of attract people downtown has been proven by creating places people want to be. Meaning they can gather in locations, it's attractive, they can shop, eat, drink, go to an event downtown," he said. "Negaunee has always been a great place, but there was more potential here for it than it had before we started this project."

Residents and visitors can stay up to date on the project by visiting the city's Facebook page at facebook.com/cityofnegaunee.