POTTSTOWN — The annual fall road paving schedule is now underway in the borough and, along with other work being done by PECO and even The Hill School, getting around town can be a tricky business these days.
Annual Paving
Parts of 11 borough streets are being milled down and re-paved this year by Glasgow Inc., based in Glenside, as part of a contract with the borough. The affected roads are College Drive, Shoemaker Road, Walnut Street, Lincoln Avenue, North Evans Street, Nightingale Street, Jackson Street, Hale Street, Grace Street, Beech Street and Sunset Drive.
Those projects are scheduled to be completed by the end of the month, depending on the weather.
Altogether, the project will re-pave about 2.7 miles of roadway at a cost of about $600,000.
High and Hanover
As for the brand new holes in the middle of the intersection of High and Hanover streets downtown, we can thank PECO for that.
Borough Manager Justin Keller said the work on the intersection, which was completely re-paved just two years ago by PECO after six years of disruption, is due to gas line replacements — by PECO. Ironically, it was in 2021 that Keller told the borough council “We don’t want to pave a road and dig it up two years later to replace a sewer line.”
In this case, PECO dug up High Street to bury electric lines and now two years later, is digging up all that new pavement to install a new gas line.
“PECO will be responsible for repaving these areas per PennDOT requirements,” Keller replied to a Mercury query.
Sheridan Street
The repair being done to Sheridan Street between Beech and Walnut streets is not being funded by the borough, but rather by The Hill School, which announced the project Friday after work had begun.
“Facilities administrators at The Hill reached out to the Borough of Pottstown on April 22 to inquire about whether this infamous street was on the paving schedule. They learned it was not in the queue, largely due to issues that would make this work prohibitively expensive,” according to a press release.
“Rich Bouher, capital construction project manager for The Hill School, explained that this particular street had very old brick gutters and more than 12 inches in depth of longstanding paving that had to be removed before repairs and resurfacing could begin. In addition, new concrete curbing had to be installed as part of the project,” the release noted.
“With an eye toward improving the street for the neighbors who live in that row of 11 homes as well as spectators and audience members visiting the Center For The Arts and the School’s ice hockey rink and other facilities, the school asked the borough if it could take on and pay for the project, a request that was happily granted.”
The cost estimate for this extensive work in the Hobart’s Run neighborhood focus area is approximately $106,000, all of which is being financed by The Hill School.
The borough replaced the remaining lead water lines with new copper lines in those Sheridan Street homes with old lead water main feeds.
“The Sheridan Street project is a testament to what can be achieved when we work together with our community partners,” Keller said in the release. “Thanks to the proactive approach and financial commitment of The Hill School, we’ve been able to address longstanding issues on this critical roadway, ensuring a smoother and safer experience for both residents and visitors. This partnership has not only aided in the revitalization efforts in this neighborhood but also allowed the borough to extend its paving efforts borough-wide, completing more miles of roadway improvements than would have been possible otherwise.”
Infrastructure-palooza
It’s all part of the $7 million in infrastructure improvements in the borough that began this summer.
The list of work includes:
• The complete milling of Mervine Street between North Washington and North Adams streets as part of the joint paving project undertaken with Upper Pottsgrove Township, which owns half the road.
• A contractor for the Pottstown Borough Authority has been “coring” as part of a project to replace 200 lead water laterals to homes; a $2.8 million project aimed at reducing lead in tap water in many of Pottstown’s older homes.
• The Borough Authority is replacing 1,000 feet of aging water lines and 1,000 feet of aging sewer lines, as well as repaving one mile of roadway, at a cost of $1.7 million this year.
• Underground, a long-awaited repair to a stormwater arch beneath 1200 E. High St. is to be repaired, an $800,000 project. It collapsed during a heavy rain in August 2018 and it has taken this long for the borough to assemble the grant funding to undertake the project without using local tax funds.
• In August, the borough cut the ribbon on the new pedestrian bridge in Memorial Park, a bridge that was destroyed in a 2019 rainstorm. The cost for that project totaled $516,000.
• And the Riverfront Park pedestrian bridge, which carries the Schuylkill River Trail over Manatawny Creek, has been closed until its re-built replacement arrives and gets installed, a project, including embankment work, which totals about $732,000.
