KENDALLVILLE — Once school is over, teams from Kendallville will get to work to replace a 6-foot-diameter corrugated iron pipe that runs under Main Street.
That means motorists will have an interesting summer in the city, as the Main will have to remain closed for almost a month while the project is completed.
With Drake Road also under construction south of the project area, drivers will need to be creative to navigate between the north and south sides of the city.
The first shipment of 6ft corrugated metal tubing arrived in town on Monday and was deployed near The Crew in advance of the proposed replacement project.
Kendallville has set its eyes on the giant corrugated iron pipes that carry water from Bixler Lake east and then north across town to Henderson Lake and finally on to Sylvan Lake in Rome City.
In 2009, the State Street pipe failed, and in the 13 years since then, Kendallville has routinely inspected the pipes for wear to prevent future collapses.
The city previously replaced other 6-foot pipes on Lincoln Street in 2011, on Garden Streets and Sherman Streets in 2014, and on Weston Avenue in 2018.
In early 2022, the pipe under Oak Street partially separated, prompting the city government to close the street to traffic to prevent vehicles from causing a cave-in. The road was closed for several weeks as the city waited for delivery of the giant drain pipe before completing the replacement project.
Late last year, a routine inspection of the Main Street pipe revealed deterioration on the flow line that could lead to failure if the pipe begins to loosen, as was the case with Oak Street.
The Main Street line is north of Drake Road/Iddings Street where the ditch runs between The Crew on the north east side and the Marathon service station on the south east side.
In December, Kendallville purchased the whistle at a price of $66,900, anticipating delivery to take at least two months.
Work on the replacement will be performed in-house by city teams, saving money compared to outsourcing the work, but overall, including materials and equipment rental, the entire project is expected to cost just over $142,000.
City of Kendallville engineer Scott Derby said the city was receiving a second delivery on Thursday and the project is still scheduled for “the first half of June” following East Noble’s layoff. An exact date has not yet been set.
However, once the project has started it will take three to four weeks to complete and the main road will need to be closed to traffic during construction. Because of this, Kendallville has specifically planned to do the work in June after East Noble went down this year to avoid bus routes and other vehicles making it difficult to get to the schools.
“Main will be shut down all the time. “We will set up a diversion,” Derby said.
The official diversion will be through Ohio Street, SR 3 and US 6 to avoid the closure.
Local passenger vehicles should be able to use north-south roads such as State or Oak Street as a shorter thoroughfare between Iddings and Diamond Streets. However, since these streets are narrow blocks of flats, trucks and other heavy vehicles should bypass the long way.
The project is also complicated by its proximity to Drake Road, which is in the first part of a two-year redevelopment project between Main Street and Weston Avenue. This road is partially open to traffic, but only for eastbound one-way traffic to Main Street, making it useless this summer for detour traffic trying to avoid the upcoming closure.
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