Cañon City to spend winter months preparing for next year’s paving of key street through town
Scott Harrison
CAÑON CITY, Colo. (KRDO) — The town’s paving season ended only a few weeks ago, but officials are already working on one of two projects on North 9th Street to prepare for repaving next year.
9th Street extends across the city from north to south, connecting to downtown, US 50, and the Arkansas River.
Crews recently began working on the northernmost segment of the street, a half-mile stretch between Meadows Avenue and Washington Street — which passes a school, a mobile home park, and several businesses.
That segment will need a concrete framework for the paving because it currently has no curbs, sidewalks, or shoulders, and the pavement is in rough condition from previous excavations.
Crews temporarily closed part of the street on Monday to dig into one of the prior excavations.
The closure happened in front of the entrance to a mobile home and a storage business, as well as near JR’s Food Store, which Leah Gonzalez has owned and operated for 18 years.
“My vendors are having a real hard time getting into the property,” she explained. “The water level is really high, so they can’t drive through the fields, with the rain. People haven’t been able to get to their storage units. We weren’t told that the whole area would be closed off.”
Meanwhile, the town hopes to start work in January on the southern end of 9th Street — a 3/4-mile stretch between Meadows and Mystic avenues that passes through a residential area.
Crews will first replace the existing water main there, making the rough pavement even bumpier.
“We kind of picture the northern one being about a six-month project,” said Leo Evans, the town’s public works director. “So, with the after-Thanksgiving start, we’re hopeful that one will wrap up in late May, early June. The southern project’s a lot bigger, with all the utility work that has to take place. And it’s just more pavement, more everything. That one will probably be about a nine-month-long project. So, we’re hoping for a January start, roughly. It’ll be a September completion, early October on that.”
The projects will cost around $8 million, with a city sales tax financing much of the work, and the rest funded by federal grants and loans.