Farmington board authorizes changes to High Street renovation project

Farmington selectmen authorized a change order for Phase I of the High Street renovation project Tuesday night. Some of the work will be completed this November with the rest being done in 2022. Google maps screenshot

FARMINGTON — Selectmen on Tuesday authorized adding up to $100,000 in additional work to the first phase of the High Street renovation project.

E.L. Vining and Sons of Farmington is doing the Phase I work. Their $927,729 bid was the lower of two for the project.

The project includes improving parking, creating a bus lane in front of the University of Maine at Farmington gym, plus installing speed tables and streetlights. The street would then be similar to Front Street, which was redone a few years ago.

Originally, Phase I would complete work from Broadway/Perham Street to South Street. Phase II would have gone from South Street to the Farmington Falls Road/U.S. Route 2. It was thought the Maine Department of Transportation Municipal Partnership Initiative would pay for half of each phase.

The DOT cap for matching funds on the project is $500,000 for the entire street, department head of Farmington Public Works Philip Hutchins, said Tuesday. The town would be paying for most of Phase II, he noted.

Hutchins suggested adding 580 feet of bituminous curbing sidewalk and six new streetlights from South Street to Lake Avenue to Phase I and including the second section of road paving in the town’s annual paving plan.

“The best estimate for the addition to the first phase would be $80,000 to $100,000,” Hutchins said.

The original Phase I from Broadway to South Street has 2,300 feet of granite curbing at a cost of $50 per foot, he wrote in a later email. “The additional 580 feet, we plan to transition to bituminous curbing at a cost of $11 per foot.” Without any further MDOT contributions, this may be our only option to finish the project, Hutchins wrote.

“The second phase hasn’t been engineered yet,” he noted Tuesday. “I think it should have been one big phase.”

Is there time to do (the added work) this year, Selectman Chairman Matthew Smith asked.

The outside of the road will be held off, Hutchins said. “It is too late in the season and may complicate sidewalk snow removal,” he noted. “The inside roadway construction will be completed and paved this fall to get the traffic flowing again before winter.”

Sidewalks from about Maple Avenue to the Falls Road are in good shape but the roadway needs work, Hutchins said. “We don’t plan to reconstruct the sidewalks all the way.”

Paving from Lake Avenue as part of the town’s annual paving plan would cost about $200,000, he said. The town can get a 19-mil base for about $70 per ton; it was charged $167 per ton for the same material in the Phase I bid, Hutchins said.

“We can go twice as far with the same money and still have some left over,” Smith said.

“The construction materials market prices and availability are extremely unstable, if we can lock-in the additional work this season by a simple change order, E.L. Vining will be able to get supplies ordered now to prepare for the spring work,” Hutchins explained in his email. “Rather than putting the additional work into a new bid process, this will save time and money.”