Graves lane construction extends into November

Transportation officials had a goal of seeing Graves Lane open by Nevada Day, but construction on the project will extend into November.

Regional Transportation Commission Engineer Harvey Brotzman said Nevada Day was always a target date to have the extension open, but the contract with Granite Construction set the deadline at Nov. 15.

"It's kind of like when you order a car and hope it will get there on time, but it doesn't," Brotzman said. "We thought we could do it, but we missed it and we want to do it right. We would like to see it really finished before it opens so that when it's done, it's done."

Transportation Chairman Jon Plank said opening the extension on Nevada Day was symbolic, but he agreed he would rather see the project completed correctly

"What's important to me is that it gets done and gets done right," Plank said.

Project Manager Brian Roll said there is still landscaping, utility and curb work left on the 7,770-foot extension. Officials said they thought it would be better to open the road and leave it open rather than open it and immediately close lanes to finish things.

"I would rather make sure everything gets done," Roll said. "You don't want to open a new road and have traffic control on the first day. That's ridiculous."

Plants are waiting at Dayton Valley Floral & Nursery for landscaping and about 3,000 feet of sidewalks are left to finish. Roll said there are two days of paving left before the road will be striped. Construction on the road was held up by the $157,000 replacement of a water line. If you don't count the cost of the utility upgrade, the roughly $6.3 million project is on budget. Roll said it was better to replace the lines as part of the project rather than tear the road up next year to do the same work.

The money to replace the line came from the project's $256,000 contingency fund. The city's utilities department will repay the transportation commission for the utility work.