- Originally expected to reopen in November, State Street in Bennington is now set to open Dec. 15.
- Cheryl King is a resident who lives near State Street and is ready for the road to reopen.
- She said: “I understand that there are a lot of things that go into it, a lot of pieces to the puzzle of putting this project together. I also understand that there’s been months where nothing was done on this road while people were completely, completely inconvenienced.”
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
State Street from 147th to 156th has been closed for months. I'm Jill Lamkins, your Northwest Omaha neighborhood reporter here on State Street in Bennington where construction delays have caused concerns for neighbors waiting for the road to reopen.
Cheryl King has lived with State Street beyond her backyard for the past five years.
She uses the road to get around every single day.
But construction shut down the road in April and she’s more than ready for it to open back up.
“I understand that there are a lot of things that go into it, a lot of pieces to the puzzle of putting this project together. I also understand that there’s been months where nothing was done on this road while people were completely, completely inconvenienced.”
Originally set to reopen in November, State Street has seen some bumps in the road.
Douglas County Engineer, Todd Pfitzer, told me one of the issues was with concrete.
"Concrete doesn't perform the way we want it to so we had some bad concrete and we had to tear it back out and put new concrete in."
Another issue: Contractors had to relocate an OPPD utility duct, which took longer than expected.
"We did hope it would be done earlier, we did, and there have been - the concrete is an example of some delays, the utility took longer to move."
But neighbors like Cheryl didn’t know that’s why the reopening has been delayed.
"If something had happened, if there'd been some communication… but we've just been sitting here on a road that seems, when you look at it, perfectly ready for traffic and it's still completely closed."
Now, Pfitzer says if the contractor doesn’t meet the deadline, it will pay a penalty.
"And as of now they're still within their days because of some of these things as we talked about.
He says the contractor has told him they expect to meet the deadline.
And from her deck, Cheryl will be watching.
“It’s time for State to be open!”
State Street is expected to reopen on December 15th. In Bennington, I'm Jill Lamkins, your Northwest Omaha neighborhood reporter.
