Borough ready to bid out total rebuild of St. Michaels Street

It’s just a short block but it’s long been a challenge for drivers and the borough public works crew.

Relief is in sight, with new underground water and sewage pipes, a new crushed-rock subbase and, most noticeably, new concrete pavement coming for the one-block stretch of St. Michaels Street from Church to Front streets.

Borough staff expect to receive 100% complete drawings from the engineers by the end of this week, the last step to bidding out the project, Capital Projects Director Amber Al-Haddad reported to the assembly for its meeting on May 13.

The borough is moving the project forward at an accelerated pace so that the digging, pipelaying and paving can be completed this fall.

Last year, borough officials moved St. Michaels up on the work list, bumping the McKinnon Street repair project from the top spot. Crews have had to dig up St. Michaels seven times in the past two years to repair water main breaks.

The decades-old water mains are ductile iron, which is prone to pitting and corrosion, leaking and breakage, Al-Haddad said.

The project will include pulling up all of the street pavement and sidewalks, digging down 18 inches for installation of new water and sewage pipes and storm water culverts, filling in a new subbase of crushed rock, installing new laterals to the property lines along the street, and covering it all with six-inch-thick concrete, she said.

The water pipes will be HDPE, or high-density polyethylene pipe.

The plan is to bid the work later this month and award the contract in June, with two or three months for the winning contractor to complete the work, Al-Haddad said.

The borough estimates the total project at $1.1 million.

The 300-foot-long block of St. Michaels is steep, starting at a 4% grade at the top and tilting to a 12% grade at the bottom of the hill, but that should not present any problems for the work, the projects director said.

The borough and its contractor will plan for temporary water and sewage connections during the work, to accommodate homes along the street, Al-Haddad said.