After working on Seckman Road for the past year, the Jefferson County Public Works Department is returning its attention to Old Lemay Ferry Road in Imperial.
This fall, crews are expected to begin grading, widening and realigning a 1-mile section of Old Lemay Ferry from south of the Regency Woods subdivision to Kneff Road in Imperial.
Public Works Director Jason Jonas said those improvements make up the third and fourth phases of the Department’s six-phase Old Lemay Ferry Road plan. Work on the first two phases of the Old Lemay Ferry Road improvements wrapped up in May 2023.
“Dating back to probably 2020, we started doing all these Seckman Road and Old Lemay Ferry projects, and we really had to stage them so that we don’t have too much going on and the traffic can get around pretty freely,” he said. “We’ll start work later this fall and into next year (on phases 3 and 4). If I were to give a best guess, I would probably say, since we’re awarding it here in mid-August, they will probably start construction sometime around October.”
The Jefferson County Council was scheduled on Aug. 12, after the Leader deadline, to vote on whether to award a $2,473,981.12 construction contract to Above and Below Contracting LLC in Imperial for the improvements. Jonas said the county received five bids for phases 3 and 4, and Above and Below’s submitted the lowest and most responsive one.
Seventy percent, or $1,731,786.78, of the project will be paid for through federal funds while the remaining 30 percent, or $742,194.34, will come from the county’s share of a 1/2-cent countywide sales tax for road and bridge improvements.
Jonas said the project touches council districts 2, 4 and 7.
The upcoming project includes “quite a bit of work,” he said.
Construction crews will grade the road to improve sight distance, realign a few sharp curves and add shoulders. A couple of retaining walls will also be constructed along the route, Jonas said.
“We’ll have 4-to-10-foot shoulders depending on a couple of the inside curves,” he said. “In general, through that 1-mile corridor, there will be 4-foot shoulders on both sides.”
Jonas said he expects the work on Old Lemay Ferry to continue into 2025.
Past projects
Phase 1 of the Old Lemay Ferry Road project was completed in December 2022 and included realigning a section of the road from East Rock Creek Road in Imperial to Spring Forest Road just outside Arnold and adding turn lanes at both ends of the project, as well as replacing a box culvert at East Rock Creek and adding guard rails and stormwater improvements.
For phase 2, crews worked on a 3,250-foot section between Timber Creek Lane and Spring Forest Road in the Arnold area to realign and repave the road in spring 2023. Storm sewer work was also completed.
Gershenson Construction Co. in Eureka was the lower of two bids for the first two phases, which cost $4,215,220. Half of that $4,215,220 project was paid for through federal funds while the rest came from the county’s 1/2-cent sales tax for road and bridge improvements.
In fall 2023, the Department took a break from Old Lemay Ferry Road to work on a 1-mile stretch of Seckman Road in Imperial. Those improvements are expected to be finished Aug. 19. That project included grading and straightening the road, plus adding a left-turn lane for westbound traffic to enter the Mastodon State Historic Site and putting shoulders, curbs and gutters along the road.
Crews also raised the road out of the 100-year floodplain.
PCX Construction in Arnold was the lowest of two bidders for the job at $4,207,375, with federal funding paying for 70 percent, or $2,945,162.50, of the work and 30 percent, or $1,262,212.50, coming from the countywide 1/2-cent sales tax for road and bridge improvements.
Future phases
Jonas said the Public Works Department will solicit construction bids for phase 5 of the Old Lemay Ferry Road project soon, with construction set to begin early next year.
He said the phase 5 project picks up where crews left off in phases 1 and 2 and will focus on a roughly 1-mile stretch between Spring Forest Road and Vogel Road in the Arnold area.
A left-turn lane will be added at the entrance of the Beuna Vista subdivision.
“That project will be adding 6-foot shoulders on both sides (of Old Lemay Ferry) and widening the lanes,” Jonas said. “It’ll have a couple of small retaining walls, some guard rails, and we’ll be adding in a turn lane at Adobe Drive. There’s a lot of traffic on Old Lemay Ferry, so if you’ve got a lot of left-turn movements, a left-turn lane helps out a lot.”
The phase 5 improvements will cost an estimated $2.5 million, according to the Public Works Department website.
Public Works will start work on phase 6 in late 2025 to early 2026, focusing on a portion of Old Lemay Ferry from Seckman Road to the Regency Woods subdivision and from Kneff Road to Old Hwy. M. That project will cost an estimated $390,000 and will include asphalt overlay and rumble strips, according to county documents.