Sanford furthers downtown revitalization with Westside Village road improvements
Courtesy / City of Sanford
A nearly $2.3 million roadway improvement project is on tap for Westside Village, adjacent to Sanford’s downtown.
The city of Sanford plans to invest nearly $2.3 million in roadway improvements that make up part of a larger downtown revitalization effort for the fast-growing York County community of 21,000.
The project will take place in a neighborhood called Westside Village, so-called because it’s to the west of the city’s downtown.
The city’s roadway capital improvement plan several years ago identified the need reconstruct roads that bound and intersect the village — Shaw, Prescott, Kimball and Twombley. The largely residential neighborhood borders downtown’s Main Street and leads to city parks, a playground and baseball diamonds.
“This targeted effort is part of a larger plan of downtown revitalization as this neighborhood sits wedged between walkable portions of urban Maine Street/Route 109 and the city’s parks facilities at Goodall Park and Benton Playground,” Matt Hill, the city’s director of public works, wrote in a memo to the Sanford City Council.
Gorrill Palmer, a civil engineering firm in South Portland, consulted on the job. The goal is to make the neighborhood safe, comfortable, attractive and convenient for vehicles, pedestrians and bicyclists, Jared Winchenbach, a project engineer with Gorrill Palmer, said during a public hearing on the project.
Complete rebuild
The project tackles a complete rebuild of the roadways, sidewalks, drainage, on-street parking and other improvements, Hill told the council at its recent virtual meeting.
The bid amount, submitted by Sargent Corp. of Stillwater, will expend the available capital improvement program funding for the project, he added.
“It should be noted that moving this project forward continues the commitment from the city of Sanford toward building momentum toward our economic revitalization,” Hill wrote.
Councilors said they’ve heard concerns from residents about the potential impact of construction on their properties. They reported that residents in other sections of the city wanted to know why so much work was being put into Westside Village when their roads also needed work.
“There’s nobody’s road that doesn’t need attention,” said City Manager Steven Buck.
Hill said the goal is to get reconstructions done where needed so that the city can move away from pricier projects and toward simpler maintenance jobs.
“That’s sometimes a tough political pill to swallow,” he added.
The project schedule is unclear. It was originally scheduled to get going this summer in time to wrap up by mid-October, Hill said. But depending on Sargent’s availability, it could turn into a two-season job.
“A couple of years ago, this might have felt out of reach, so it’s exciting to have this in front of us,” said Councilor Ayn Hanselmann.
The upgrade is just the latest in a number of recent improvement projects in Sanford.
Others include a 45-mile high-speed fiber optic network that’s the largest municipal broadband network operating in Maine; the $100 million construction of an integrated High School and Technical Center that’s the largest state-funded school construction project in Maine’s history; a new 150,000-panel solar power installation at Sanford Seacoast Regional Airport that subsequently sold to NextEra Energy Inc. (NYSE: NEE); and a planning partnership with the Maine Department of Transportation to revitalize the downtown with newly paved roads, new streetlights and signal lights, and redesign of dangerous intersections and crosswalks.
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