Peoria Standard

The city of East Peoria is scheduled to perform several improvement projects on Grange Road this summer.

The projects include repairing and improvement the drainage structures underneath the roadway, which must be done prior to any road repairs due to their location. The culvert pipe running under Grange road is in need of rehabilitation, and the city staff has determined that slip lining the old structure will be the most economical and logical repairs.

The meeting was streamed on Facebook.

"There were fears at times, as poor as the roadway was getting, that we had different complaints and and some spoke about the the danger," Daniel Decker, East Peoria Commission commissioner, said. "And there's a fear that we would have to close it until we could afford to get something done. And it is dangerous. I've driven it many times. I don't drive it often because it's just not the area of town I live in. But not only does it service people that live in East Peoria, it also serves those that live in Washington. But we have a huge amount of traffic that goes to and from ICC, and that's important. And then that's one roadway that they can use to go back and forth through school."

The City Council was presented with a contract for part of the project, an agreement with J.C. Dillion Inc. for $22,230 for all supplies and work involved. 

The council was also presented with a resolution for a contract handling erosion control around the culvert structure. The city will enter into a contract with Krumholz Brother Landscaping for $23,000 to create the concrete-filled basket walls and mattress lining around the culvert structure to prevent further erosion. The bid was far cheaper than some of the offers, which were above the $100,000 mark. The city staff was confident in this offer and was pleased to have such an economical offer. 

The final part of the project, and the part that the City Council suspected nearby residents would be most unhappy with, was the redoing of the road itself. City staff has long thought about how best to handle redoing the road, and settled on tilling down six inches of rock and laying down four inches of blacktop. The city also intends to widen the road as much as it can within the layout, and painting on new stripes. 

Officials said they were sorry to say that a temporary full closure of the road was determined to be the best decision for the work. The closure will occur starting in May and officials hope it will only last two to four weeks. The end result would be well worth the temporary inconvenience, officials said.