CARIBOU, Maine — Caribou’s streets are busy with activity as city employees and contractors work on North Main Street and put the finishing touches on High Street.
The High Street project is “99.9 percent finished,” with the Maine Department of Transportation replacing one small piece of sidewalk, Caribou Public Works Director Dave Ouellette said on Monday.
The North Main Street project is a partnership between the city of Caribou and the MDOT and covers a stretch of road just over a mile long — starting at the Caribou Public Library and going up to the roundabout next to Cary Medical Center.
The project includes mill and fill work, in addition to installing underground pipes and basins beneath the road to ensure future stability. The project is similar to the High Street project that began last year.
So far, the public works department has removed all of the storm drains and sidewalks next to the northbound side of the road, Ouellette said. A milling machine then came in and milled the area to provide a 2 percent slope.
Following the grinding, Ouellette said Soderberg Construction came in and completed a three-quarter-inch shim around the catch basins, which will allow the curbing to be set on top of a level surface.
Starting on June 8, Dirigo Slipform of Old Town will install new concrete curbings, after which Soderberg Construction will return to complete the overlay on the surface of the roadway. It will then be up to Public Works to build new sidewalks and apply gravel. Once this is completed, Soderberg will return to apply an overlay to the sidewalks.
Ouellette said on Monday that the project is already five days ahead of schedule, and that it may be completed by the first week of July.
“I suspect it will take my crew the rest of the month of June to construct the sidewalks and Soderberg should be able to put the surface on during the first week of July,” he said.
Compared to the work on High Street — a project that Ouellette said last year had been a constant topic of discussion for the entire 21 years he had been part of the department — the public works director said the North Main Street project “has been a breeze.”
“High Street sees probably eight or nine thousand cars a day and North Main probably has a thousand,” he said. “It’s going better than I was expecting. At first we were thinking we’d have to start after the Fourth of July, but we might actually have the project wrapped up by that time.”
The city approved the project on Feb. 24, authorizing a $400,000 agreement between Caribou and MDOT, with the department paying up to half of the costs. All of the work done by the public works department will count as in-kind labor toward the project, reducing the city’s overall expenses.
Ouellette asks motorists to have patience as workers repair the roadway over the next month.
“Any time crews are out working you’ll see signs up ahead,” he said. “We’ll have traffic going one way and let four or five cars through and pretty soon they’ll be able to go the other way. A little patience goes a long way. The crews are doing this to make it better for everyone.”
