Residents living on Sebastopol streets scheduled for repaving may experience a couple days of disruption in exchange for smoother roads in the long-term starting next week.
Hansen Lane, Michael Place, Kathleen Court and Cleveland Avenue will be undergoing reconstruction through the summer, projected to finish by Aug. 15, according to a May 11 public notice from the city’s engineering division.
Project Manager Dan Giordani from Argonaut Constructors, contracted by the city for the job, said repaving the four streets will start on Monday, June 7 and last about a week and a half. The company will likely begin giving residents notice of the construction schedule later this week, he said.
“The paving itself is going to go fast. That’s going to be the most disruptive to the public,” Giordani said, since there will be about two days during the repaving process when residents will be unable to use their driveways.
Crews may be active Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. until 4 p.m., but the repaving will be staged so not all four streets will lose access to their driveways at the same time, he said.
Giordani said Argonaut Constructors will be knocking on doors and placing door hangers at residences to notify people that crews will be paving their streets at certain days and times, when layers of asphalt will need to settle without cars driving across, where driveways meet the city street.
“People are going to have to park their cars on a different street and walk in and out if they want to leave during the day,” he said. “And then at four o’clock, they’ll have access back to their driveways. So, from seven to four, they will not be able to use their driveways.”
The public notice said, “During the day, the city asks that residents limit their trips into and out of the work zone to reduce traffic issues.”
Per the notice, half the street would close to traffic and parking won’t be allowed on a certain section of the street when construction is underway. Flaggers will guide one-way traffic through the other half of the street and “mail deliveries and emergency vehicles and trash pickup will be accommodated,” the public notice said.
“To reconstruct the streets, the contractor will dig out half a street at a time and construct a new pavement base section between the curbs,” and then the final asphalt covering will be paved, the public notice said.
The entire street would reopen when construction ends for the day, with temporary asphalt ramps bridging the roughly three-inch shift between the old pavement and the new pavement base so driveways can reopen at that time, according to the public notice.
When the repaving project is over, less disruptive projects are expected to go until August, Giordani said. “After we pave, we have to raise castings, manhole covers, water valve covers, we have to clean up, we have to do new striping and reflectors and monuments,” he said. “Kind of in and out, intermittently.”
