Brand new gutter, curb and sidewalk shines in front of Gardnerville Station on Monday.
While it will be a hot tar summer for the more than 20,000 motorists a day who use Main Street in Gardnerville, for those working on Highway 395 it’s more “What Lies Beneath.”
In the roughly 140 years since the founding of Gardnerville, people have buried a lot of utility infrastructure under the town.
A century worth of pipes, conduit and even a concrete bed lies under the highway which will be taken down to dirt between Waterloo and Mill Street.
Project Engineer Wes Osmer used the word “nightmare” a couple of times when describing the challenges of repaving the road.
“I know it’s slow going,” he said. “Conduit trenching has been nothing but a nightmare. A lot of the old town’s utilities were built abandoned, rebuilt, moved, abandoned, and rebuilt, so we are constantly finding abandoned utilities and utilities unidentified in the plans. Part of the issue is that we have to coordinate whether those utilities can be removed, remain in place and whether we have to go over them or under them.”
When completed, Main Street through Gardnerville will actually end up lower than it is now.
“From Waterloo to Mill Street is a damaged road that needs more rehab than can be done with a traditional mill and fill,” he said. “We will be pulverizing all the roadbed in place up to 18 inches.”
That work likely won’t start until mid-June after Gardnerville Elementary and Carson Valley Middle schools let out, so construction crews don’t have to work around bus traffic, too.
Osmer said work on the highway will continue through August, when he said he hoped they would be ready to restripe.
Getting asphalt laid down is first phase of a larger project that will require right of way for installing lighting.
Also in the plan is the long sought continuation of the sidewalk from Kingslane south. Completing that and installing crosswalk lighting will connect Lampe Park with Martin Slough Trail.
