Superior Street Reconstruction Project Continues
With the construction season wrapping up, Superior Street reopened to the public today but now the project will continue next year after being expected to be completed in 2020.
DULUTH, Minn. – With the construction season wrapping up, Superior Street reopened to the public today but now the project will continue next year after being expected to be completed in 2020.
Businesses are breathing a sigh of relief along portions of Superior Street as it has reopened but the finishing touches of the project are not expected to be completed until next year.
Phase Three of the project, which consists of the three-block section from Lake Avenue to 3rd Avenue West and includes things like underground utilities, sidewalks and lighting is now expected to be completed in the spring as crews ran into some issues like recovering some unexpected items under the street.
In the meantime, temporary asphalt will be placed on portions of the street and sidewalks so Northlanders can still use them.
“It’s nice to get it open with and over it for the season,” said Duncan Schwenshon, the senior engineer for the City of Duluth. “There’s an awful lot of work that happened here in 2020 so I think everybody involved is ready to take a breath and relax a little bit and wait till we come back in the spring again.”
At Toasty’s, managers say they were limiting delivery options during this year’s project because of the inconvenience. Now, they have some mixed feelings about the opening of the street, as more customers mean more traffic and more traffic means a higher likelihood of COVID coming into the premises.
“It’s a bittersweet feeling of course because there’s no doubt that when you have road construction out front that it’s going to affect the amount of people that are coming to your door,” said Thomas Hagen, a chef and general manager at Toasty’s. “And so we’re happy that it’s opening back up of course but it’s also with any transition that’s quick, it’s a little unpredictable.”
At Ragstock, management there says they’re hoping the reopening brings in more customers. They say the construction has impacted the business – it wasn’t as bad as they had expected but it still wasn’t great.
“We’re very excited that it’s over,” said Ariel Bonkoski, the store manager at Ragstock. “It’s taken quite a bit of time. We’re just excited to hopefully boost our sales. We did lose some sales throughout mixed with COVID, it hasn’t been helpful.”
Meanwhile, the project manager also said portions of Phase Two between 3rd Avenue East by the Greysolon Plaza and 4th Avenue East also need to be completed net year as they ran out of time.
