Blue Earth’s Main Street will have nearly $4 million in upgrades done to it this coming summer.

First, two blocks of Main Street and one block of Sixth Street will be torn up and rebuilt with new pavement and underground utilities at an estimated cost of $2 million.

Then, north Main Street from the Leland Parkway overpass to Fairgrounds Road will be rebuilt, complete with a new bridge over the Blue Earth River.

The total for street construction and the bridge is expected to be at $1.8 million.

And, the plans for all this reconstruction are starting to shape up and be finalized.

This row of trees along the fairgrounds was cut down last week as a first step in this summer’s street work.

Faribault County engineer Mark Daly was at last Monday’s Blue Earth City Council meeting to go over some of the details with the council.

Daly said the work has just gotten underway with the city removing a row of trees on the city-owned fairgrounds property.

“We plan on redoing the west entrance to the fairgrounds as part of the project,” Daly says. “It will be wider, but just one lane instead of the split roadway it is now.”

The entrance will also be shifted south and straightened out, he said. In addition, they will slope the area where the trees were, to allow better space for a sidewalk complete with a grass buffer area (boulevard). “Some of the trees were hollow anyway,” he explained as the reason for removing them. “We will grub those out and make a more gentle slope in that area.”

In answer to a question from councilman Dan Warner, Daly said it would be up to the city to replace any trees in the area. And, city engineer Wes Brown says the city generally replaces trees with two-inch thick silver maples.

Daly said the plan also is to put back a five-foot wide sidewalk, but if the city wants it wider, they would be responsible for the additional cost.

“We also plan on connecting the sidewalk all the way to the Unity Trail,” he added.

Daly also pointed out that the roadway will be narrowed and will be striped to indicate that it is just a two-lane street, not a four-lane as some people have assumed in the past.

“All city streets are two-lane,” he says. “We will still have a six-foot wide area for bicycles on both sides, and there will be right turn lanes, clearly marked, and signs that say right lane must turn right.”

The new bridge will also be just a two lane bridge, nowhere near as wide as it currently is.

Daly added the speed limit on that section of North Main will be dropped from its current 45 miles per hour down to 40, saying it is a safety issue. There also will be no parking along that stretch of road.

Another change to the road will be the surface.

“It will all be bituminous, no concrete,” Daly says. “And we expect a big savings, I haven’t seen bituminous this low in 15 years. It is at $40 to $45 per ton and last year it was $80.”

One councilman questioned if the on and off ramps from Main to Leland Parkway were part of the project, and Daly said they were now going to be included.

As far as a timeline, the county engineer said that because the project uses federal funds, it will take longer to get the plans approved up to two months.

“I think we will get them back by the end of June and start construction mid-July,” he said. “About the time of the fair. But, because the bridge is a 115 day project, we need to start as soon as we possibly can.”

City engineer Brown’s update on the Main Street project included one big change.

“Instead of using the colored concrete for the cross walk areas, we are recommending using an exposed aggregate that uses quartzite for a reddish color,” Brown says. “The benefit over standard colored concrete is that it will last much longer and it is actually cheaper.”

The council voted to make the change as per the recommendation from the Street Committee.

Brown also said the plans came back approved from the state and he expects that they will be advertising for bids soon and that bid opening could be by the end of April, several weeks ahead of schedule.