AUBURN – Main Street will stay open for business this summer despite a lengthy road paving project, merchants were told Wednesday.

Crews will be begin installing signs around downtown Auburn on Monday, directing most traffic away from Main Street between Academy and Court streets. Crews from K&K Excavating should begin digging parts of the road by July 10.

“This is our backyard, and we’re going to work with everyone,” said K&K project manager Matt Callahan. “This is where our company is based out of, and it’s our home. We’ll make sure everyone gets plenty of notice about what we’re doing.”

It’s part of a state-funded project to reconstruct the road make it more pedestrian friendly, install a new storm water system and curbs along Main Street. The project is expected to wrap up this fall.

“The timing really has to do with when the state approved the project and when it got funded,” said Community Services Director Eric Labelle. “One stipulation was that they could not begin work until after July 4, but we want the work finished this year.”

Crews will begin detouring most traffic away from the project. Main Street north of Academy Street will be open only to local traffic – including area merchants, customers and residents – for the duration. All other northbound traffic will be detoured up Elm Street to Minot Avenue.

Southbound traffic will be directed down Mechanics Row. Main Street will be one way only from Mechanics Row north to Court Street.

Callahan said crews will stop on-street parking at places along Main Street during the project, but he said they would first give at least one week’s notice.

And Labelle said the city is giving out temporary parking passes for merchants and residents in the city’s Mechanics Row parking garage.

The plan calls for narrowing Main Street between Elm and Drummond streets from 45 feet to 38 feet. The sides would get a grassy esplanade, dividing the sidewalk from the road.

Plans also call for building six new crosswalks along Main Street with textured pavement. The city also hopes to install new street lights south along the street.

The biggest change would come at the intersection of Main Street and Mechanics Row. Traffic coming south now stops at Main Street, yielding to southbound Main Street traffic. The new pattern lets Mechanics Row traffic continue south without stopping.

John Cleveland, who operates his business, Community Dynamics, at 201 Main St., said that decision still concerned him. He worried that it would encourage speeders downtown.

“If it does, and if that new configuration creates a traffic problem, they will hear from us,” Cleveland said. “We’ll be back in force.”