Greenville Avenue’s ‘Big Dig’ begins

Greenville Avenue’s “Big Dig,” a year-long project to connect the Citizens Bank campus with sewer and water lines, began on Monday with the partial closure of the state road.

“It’s going well, it’s a little difficult sometimes for drivers adjusting to alternating their routes,” said Deputy Chief Daniel Parrillo. “Once people get used to having to go a different way than they’re normally accustomed to it’ll be fine, but it’s definitely a transitional period now that people are a little upset about.”

Message boards and detour signs have now been unveiled throughout the construction area. As part of the project, traffic in the construction area will only be open to residents on Greenville Avenue and side streets. School buses, emergency vehicles, mail carriers, along with trash and recycling collection will also be allowed access, and residents’ driveways will be maintained and kept open.

The extension is an infrastructure improvement initiative of the Narragansett Bay Commission (NBC), which is taking responsibility for the project. Their plan is to start work just west of Smokey Drive and proceed westward. By mid to late May the work will progress to just east of Salina Avenue and work westward, potentially with two crews working simultaneously.

“Day one went pretty smoothly, so we’re happy about that. We did find, as anticipated, that evening traffic was a little more intense than morning traffic, and we were able to work with DOT to make some adjustments to traffic signals to ease that as the day went by,” said Jamie Santos, the public affairs manager with NBC. “We get it that construction is awkward and difficult for everyone involved, but the most important things to worry about, of course, are safety and also efficiency of the construction site. So we really think that working with the DOT and working with the town that the traffic detours that we have in place are the way to go.”

At Monday night’s Town Council meeting, District 5 Councilman Robert Civetti stated that there were access concerns from residents of Poppy Hill Farms.

“The councilman called the station and he brought it to our attention. I spoke to David Carnevale with DiGrigorio Construction, and those residents are going to have to take a different route,” said Deputy Chief Parrillo. “They want to come out of their plat and take a right onto Greenville Avenue through the construction zone, but it’s not a safe area to be traveling through. We’re going to have to communicate with them and tell them, unfortunately, for the time being they’re going to have to go all the way around to Brown Avenue or even Route 44.”

Deputy Chief Parrillo also added that the department would continue to communicate with residents to let them know when changes will take place. He also said that there haven’t been any issues with emergency vehicles accessing the construction zone.

Scheduled work hours for the project are 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday, with no blasting or mechanical rock removal to occur after 5 p.m.

“Originally, we asked the town for permission to work three shifts at 24 hours, but in the interest of the neighbors, the town only granted potential for two working shifts, hence the 10 p.m. limit,” said Santos. “As of now, the contractor only anticipates working two shifts in the areas of deep construction. However, if the schedule gets tight, the contractor may use the extended workday at other construction points as well. The end goal is to complete the project within this construction season so that the road can settle over the winter and we can fully repave, curb to curb, in the spring.”

The project requires the installation of nearly 7,000 linear feet of new sewer lines from Salina Avenue to approximately 1,000 feet west of I-295. According to the NBC, the more than $8.5 million project cost is going to be amortized through user fees paid by Citizens Bank and other users.

“We’re still determining [with Citizens] the cost of the sewer portion of the project, but the life expectancy of the pipe is at least 50 years. We anticipate revenue from Citizens and the other commercial and residential hookups to recoup the capital investment in 10 to 20 years,” said Santos. “We tend to be pretty conservative with our calculations, so additional residential hookups or new commercial customers in the area could shorten that timeframe.”

Santos added that future tie-ins not currently part of the project would be at the decision of the town. The NBC will build stubs into the streets off Greenville to increase the efficiency of future hookups should Johnston decide to pursue those plans. She also said that traffic pattern changes might be tweaked as the project progresses.

“We’ll proceed with the plan but take exceptions into consideration as they come up,” said Santos. “Everyone has been really, really cooperative and we appreciate that.”