Road work is underway of Fourth Street in Marquette, near The Mining Journal office. (Journal photo by Bud Sargent)

MARQUETTE — One of Marquette’s most notorious potholes is being addressed on 4th Street this month, as part of the city’s busy road work season. But the work happening now is just the beginning.

“The majority of the street improvements project is routine heavy maintenance to roads that have not completely structurally failed and can be rehabilitated,” said Mikael Kipela, city engineer. “In practice, this means milling off the top portion of an asphalt road and adding a new ware surface. We’ve also completed 5 miles of roadway crack sealing which is by far the cheapest way to slow down road deterioration and maintain streets that are in good condition.

“Other roads included in this project are further deteriorated and require full depth asphalt replacement and supplementation or repair of the gravel base below the road. An example of this would be Altamont Street just south of Pioneer Road.”

Road work happening in Marquette this summer, including the work on Fourth Street, is being contracted out through Payne and Dolan. Other projects happening this summer include minor curbing work and replacing a portion of a failing water main on Fisher Street, and the resurfacing of Washington Street between Third and Fourth Streets.

“Later this summer, Oberstar Inc. will reconstruct a portion of Wright Street between Sugarloaf and VanEvera,” said Kipela. “This project includes replacement of all utilities, so much different from the current maintenance project. The utilities under this portion of roadway are over 100 years old.

“We’re still working on a budget for the upcoming years, but we’d like to prioritize resurfacing and maintenance of streets with high traffic volumes such as Third, Front, Washington and Wright Streets and Fair and Lincoln Avenue. However, local streets do require maintenance as well, and there is a fund set aside for use on those streets. We want to continue to maintain them.”

In a city as old as Marquette, sometimes road reconstruction has more to do with what’s under the road than with the road itself.

“There are portions of Marquette that still have water mains and sewers from the late 1800s. We have projects planned in the older neighborhoods of Marquette to replace these utilities which also means replacement of the road surface in the process,” said Kipela. “These are often called street reconstruction projects, but in practice the cost and duration of the projects are largely dependent on the replacement of the complex network of infrastructure that’s buried under all of our roads. As always, these projects are important, but timing is largely funding-dependent.”

A full list of the city’s 2026 proposed site locations for road repairs is as follows. Some of these projects are already completed or are underway.

1. Fair Avenue – McClellan to Lincoln

2. Garfield Avenue – Fair to Waldo

3. Lakeshore Boulevard – Fair to Michigan

4. Fourth Street – Fisher to Washington

5. Fisher Street – Front to west dead end

6. Lakeshore Boulevard – Baraga to Front

7. Altamont Street – Pioneer to Grandville

8. Overband crack filling – various locations throughout Marquette

9. Fisher Street water main replacement

“More to come around budget approval time,” said Kipela.

Annie Lippert can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 550. Her email address is alippert@miningjournal.net.