The city is working to acquire right-of-way for a planned roundabout at Hendry Street and South Main Street, city engineer Paul Simonton told Hinesville City Council members.
Simonton updated council members on a number of city projects, including road work, sewage line replacement and other improvements on tap for the city’s infrastructure.
The roundabout at Hendry Street likely will go to bid sometime early next year, he said. That roundabout will replace the light at Hendry and South Main. The traffic signal in place now is a city-owned signal.
“It is not a very efficient set up,” Simonton said. “In today’s world, that signal would never have been permitted by (the state Department of Transportation).”
Simonton said the city is working on acquiring more land to expand Krebs Park, and the landowner — Paul Krebs, for whom the park is named — could be willing to donate the property. The number of pickleball courts has increased after some tennis courts were converted, and Simonton one of the things they could look at for the additional property is something for skaters. He said he saw a couple of girls skating on the basketball courts, and that’s not good for the courts’ surfaces.
The downtown terrace project, which will build 31 townhomes on a block bordered by Court, Ashmore and Welborn streets and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, is coming along, Simonton said. Site work should be done in about four to six weeks, and then the entire tract will be turned over to the builder. Five units are now under construction.
Work on South Main Street also is moving along, Simonton said. Workers have gotten most of the utilities relocated, and storm drains for the entire route are installed. Paving on the stretch of South Main from MacArthur Drive to Veterans Parkway should take place in October or November. The plans also call for an eight-foot-wide sidewalk to allow for bicycle access, and a roundabout will be put in at the intersection of Deal and South Main streets.
The redone intersection of MacArthur and South Main Street is about 90% complete, and work on a roundabout at Ralph Quarterman Drive and Charles Frasier Boulevard will commence in October.
The city has met with the developers of a townhome project on Charles Frasier Boulevard, and they agreed to design their driveways to meet the city’s plans for Charles Frasier.
Among the work to be on Charles Frasier includes a left-turn lane and a deceleration lane at the intersections, leaving two lanes going each direction that won’t be held up by turning vehicles, Simonton said.
“They don’t get backed up because someone is trying to turn left,” he said.
The city is on waiting on a utility company before it can begin work on a decel lane into and out of Bryant Commons. The state DOT has issued a permit for the work.
“We’ll be under construction on this shortly,” Simonton said.
Simonton said they likely will get a request to extend the current work to April in order to get the project done, before the third phases begins.
Paving on Barry Mc-Caffrey Boulevard began failing almost immediately, Simonton said.
“We did some testing, and we could not figure out why we were failing,” he said.
After some other digging, they found a log in the old road bed and also found stumps in the old road bed that coincided where the new pavement was failing. The road was built in 1991, and “the logs and stumps should have been left in there,” Simonton said.
The city recently closed Bradwell Street between Mills and Wilson avenues to repair sewer failures.
“We found big sinkholes above the lines and under the pavement,” Simonton said.
He and his firm also conducting an inventory on lead and copper pipe under the ground. Much of Main Street from the Washington Street roundabout to General Stewart Way is about to be torn up, Simonton said.
“We need to do Wilson and Main Street pretty quickly,” he said.
Simonton also said plans to extend water and sewer to the city’s event center site off Deal Street are ready, and they are looking at widening Deal Street. The city also has entered into an agreement with the DOT for traffic signals along E.G. Miles Parkway with its intersections at Miles Crossing and Pineland Avenue.
That will turn Pineland into a four-way intersection, and close some driveways along E.G. Miles Parkway near that intersection. The state DOT will design the light but the city will have to supply the poles and do the installation. The city also needs to obtain additional right-of-way to locate the poles for the signal at Pineland.
The green well zone the city installed in Long County, not far from the city limits, is operating, Simonton reported. The city will raise the tank about 23 feet to match the height of the other water tanks.
The city also completed about $300,000 worth of drainage failure improvements in several locations around the city and it is putting in drainage and curb and gutter on North Maple Street.