A complete overhaul of Mill Bay Road, one of Kodiak’s main city streets, has been slightly set back by weather and delays. In spite of that, phase two of the project is currently underway and the road is open to regular traffic with flaggers and a pilot car in use.
Brechan Construction was awarded the contract to handle the Mill Bay Road Rebuild project on June 27 for the tune of roughly $2.25 million. This includes work to “raise and lower utilities, as well as mill off the existing asphalt and pave back the road way.”
Prior to this project, the last road work done on Mill Bay was a handful of emergency repairs in November of 2023.
The company was scheduled to start the current road project on Sept. 3 but was postponed about a week due to weather. Work is actively being done on Mill Bay Road from 7:30 a.m. until 7 p.m. daily but that is still weather dependent.
Louis Rocheleau, the project manager for Brechan Construction and Vice President of the company, told the city council on Thursday, Sept. 12 that paving on the driving lanes is not happening at night during this project for a few reasons.
“Mill Bay Road has a lot of residential areas as well, not just businesses. So we get people that call and complain that they can’t sleep at night. It’s obviously a safety hazard when we have a lot more drunk drivers, actually, during that time frame. And we’ve even had a lot of impaired people walking through the mac [asphalt-concrete mix], barefoot,” Rocheleau said.
He added that the quality of the paving is affected at night when there are cooler temperatures and potentially more moisture, especially in September.
Phase 2 of the project which encompasses the section of Mill Bay Road from Ole Johnson to Benny Benson began on Sept. 16. This involves a pilot car and traffic flaggers, so motorists can expect delays when driving in that part of town. When pilot car operations are in place Brechan encourages traffic to enter from Ole Johnson or Von Scheele as some of the other side roads that intersect with Mill Bay will be closed.
Under the current schedule, the Mill Bay Road rebuild is set to be completed by Saturday, Sept. 21.
