City Lays Out Construction Timeline; Oregon’s Secretary of State Dies; LCC Closed Today; Airport Project Delayed

City Lays Out Construction Timeline

Last night at the Florence Event Center City officials laid out the timeline for the Revision Florence Street scape plane.  On hand were officials from the Oregon Department of Transportation and the contractor, along with the city’s design team.  The project is laid out in three stages with the first to begin on March 4th.  which will be the Westside  highway 101 from 126 to the Siuslaw River Bridge.  Stage 2 will begin on or around May 28th and will encompass the East Side of Highway 101 along the same stretch of roadway.  Stage three will be pedestrian medians and the south side of Highway 126. And that will take place in late August.  The project is expected to be completed the week of October 4th.  Obvious concerns about ingress and egress from businesses along the construction route were addressed.  While inconveniences will occur, businesses will be allowed to remain open with some slight delays as they are reconnected to new utilities that are being rerouted  underground.  Side streets that run perpendicular to highway 101 and 126 could be closed for up to 10 consecutive days and proper signage and detour information will be made available.  Highway 101 will also have some single lane closures at times but will be limited for the memorial day weekend and throughout the tourist season.  The project will cost 7,288,000 dollars and an additional 1,276,000 for ODOT paving

Oregon’s Secretary of State Dies

Oregon’s Secretary of State, Dennis Richardson passed away Tuesday and members of the Oregon legislature as well as the state’s senators have been mourning his death.  Senator Jeff Merkley released a statement yesterday remembering the man and the fond memories of their service together in the state legislature. Richardson was a combat helicopter pilot in Vietnam and served 19 years in public service.  He had 9 children and 31 grandchildren. Flags will be flown at half mast. Richardson succumbed to brain cancer, he was 69 years old.

LCC Closed Today

Lane community college campuses will be closed today, including Florence.  Issues with weather in Eugene and Cottage Grove are part of the reason but Russ Pierson, Dean of the Florence Campus says that an issue with network services between campuses has made it necessary to close the local campus.  Services are not expected to be restored until Friday and Pierson says a decision for Friday’s classes will be made sometime today.  Eugene and Cottage Grove classes have been closed all week due to weather.

Airport Project Delayed

The lighting upgrade project for the Florence airport was to begin construction on Monday, but due to weather the contractor for that project, Kunert Electric has requested a new date of March 18th.  Kunert is based out of roseburg at the base of the cascade range and is snowed in.  Airport operations will continue as normal until March 18th.  Construction will take about 60 days to complete.  The new completion date is now May 16th.