Uptown Maumee Construction Work Is Continuing At A Steady Pace

BY MIKE McCARTHY | MIRROR EDITOR — Construction work in uptown Maumee has been proceeding at a steady pace over the past two weeks as workers take advantage of mostly favorable weather conditions to make significant headway toward its completion before winter sets in.

Until Tuesday of this week, most of the work has centered on the 100 block of West Dudley Street and the 100 block of East Wayne Street.

On Tuesday morning, however, an excavator operator was busy tearing into the sloped area of the north side of the 100 block of East Broadway Street, removing large chunks of earth and depositing countless bucketloads of dirt into waiting dump trucks for prompt removal from the construction site.

East Broadway Street

The plan for the 100 block of East Broadway is to create several new diagonal parking spaces on the north side of the street, running parallel to the nearby St. Paul’s Lutheran Church parking lot and being separated only by a block-long retaining wall and a new 6-foot-wide sidewalk that will extend all the way from Gibbs Street to Conant Street.

Construction workers are expected to build the retaining wall as early as next week, with plans to prepare the area containing the new parking spaces soon after. A Helms Construction official said earlier this week that the goal is to clear the way for paving the entire 100 block of East Broadway Street within two weeks.

East Wayne Street

On Tuesday morning, workers from Oglesby Construction were busy pouring concrete in the apron of the parking lot approach of the East Mews, located on the north side of the 100 block of East Wayne Street, directly across the street from the front of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. 

The East Mews public parking lot will have only one entrance/exit moving forward, as the second entranceway has been eliminated to create more parking spaces on the north side of the 100 block of East Wayne in the segment of the street located closest to Conant Street.

The 100 block of East Wayne Street is expected to be paved as early as Friday of this week, weather permitting.

West Dudley Street

In the 100 block of West Dudley Street, workers have been focused on paving the KeyBank driveway approach on the north side of the street as well as the driveway approach to the west of the Boss & Vitou legal offices. Both of those projects were completed on Monday.

On Monday and Tuesday, workers were busy tearing up the old sidewalk on the north side of the 100 block of West Dudley Street with plans to replace the 4-foot-wide sidewalks with new sidewalks measuring 6 feet wide.

Workers were making rapid progress on the sidewalk project this week, tearing up the old concrete and quickly pouring new concrete in its place. On Tuesday, the sidewalk crew had worked its way westward to the corner of West Dudley and Allen streets, nearing completion of that phase of the project.

It is hoped that the 100 block of West Dudley Street will also be paved by Friday of this week.

The Arch Arrives

At approximately 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, uptown Maumee’s first decorative arch arrived on a flatbed truck and was carefully offloaded to an area located on south side of the Monnette’s property directly across the street from Union School.

The 72-foot-wide arch is expected to be installed up to 27 feet above Conant Street, near the entrance of the Ft. Meigs Memorial Bridge, on Friday morning. The installation of the arch is expected to take place after the morning commute, sometime between 9:00 a.m. and noon, according to city officials. Conant Street will be closed from Wayne Street to the Ft. Meigs Memorial Bridge at that time. The bridge will be closed to both Maumee and Perrysburg traffic until the installation is completed.

The long-awaited arch will be the first of four that are planned for the uptown Maumee area. The other three are scheduled to be installed in the spring of next year when the new construction season commences.