April 22--A heavily traveled stretch of 151st Street in Orland Park will finally be repaired and widened next year, a project that village officials have pursued for more than a decade.
Three trustees voted at a village board committee meeting Monday night to recommend that the full board approve a contract for a second phase of design and engineering for the project to Christopher B. Burke Engineering.
The Indianapolis-based firm was first awarded a contract in 2004 to design and provide construction documents for the project, which will repair and widen 151st Street between Ravinia and West avenues. Construction was put on hold largely because of the project's high cost, but the road sorely needs repairs, Trustee Patricia Gira said.
"It's just in really bad shape right now," Gira said.
In 2013, Orland Park secured $2 million in federal funding for the project through the Southwest Conference of Mayors. The village's share of the project would be about $3.6 million, with another $1.1 million if trustees want to move ComEd utility cables underground, said Kurt Corrigan, Orland Park's transportation and engineering manager.
The two-lane stretch of 151st Street would be widened to three lanes at West Avenue, expanding to five lanes closer to Ravinia Avenue, where it will meet up with another five-lane segment extending to LaGrange Road that the Illinois Department of Transportation is handling as part of the LaGrange Road widening project, Jason Souden, vice president of Burke Engineering, said.
Souden said that in the "best-case scenario," Orland Park will receive IDOT approval of the initial design plans in about a month, have a set of final design plans by February and complete the improvements by November 2016, with final touch-up work remaining the following spring.
But he and Corrigan cautioned that there may be delays outside their control, such as obtaining IDOT approval of their plans -- required to receive the federal funds -- and the rate of progress on the massive LaGrange Road project that's extends from 131st to 179th streets and is scheduled to be done in late 2016 or early 2017.
Since 151st Street is only two lanes, Souden said they would likely need to limit it to westbound traffic for non-emergency vehicles during the construction, with eastbound traffic diverted to 153rd Street.
"I don't want this going on during construction on LaGrange," Corrigan said.
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