While it has kept downtown business owners worried for months, Blue Earth city engineer Wes Brown says the Main Street restoration project just might not be as bad as originally thought.

At a meeting on Thursday night, May 5, Brown told a group of business owners that there have been some changes in the plans.

“It will be done in three phases,” Brown said. “The first phase is the block of Sixth Street (from Main to Nicollet). After that block is completely finished, they will move on the north block of Main (Fifth to Sixth), and then in phase three do the south block (Sixth to Seventh),”

Brown says there should not be a time that all three blocks are closed at the same time. He added the plan also calls for the intersections at Fifth and Main, Sixth and Main and Seventh and Main, to be closed for as short a time as possible.

The engineer also had good news for the sidewalks in front of businesses.

“The contractor plans to keep those in place for as long as possible,” he said. “He will only tear up the sections of sidewalk necessary to do water line hookups into the building.”

Even then, the sidewalks will still be open, although with gravel and rubber mats, throughout most of the project.

“There could be as few as seven days all summer that the sidewalks are not passable and you can’t get in your front door,” Brown said. “Until the very end when they are all removed and replaced.”

There will be fencing installed to keep people from wandering off the sidewalks into the construction areas in the street.

Detour signs will be in place to direct traffic around the construction zone. There will also be “crossing zones” to get across streets and intersections in the project area.

One issue might be lighting. Since all of the street lights in the downtown area will be removed for the project work, Brown says it could be rather dark.

Another change is the start date, which had been around June 1.

“The contractor wants to start as early as possible, which could be as soon as May 23,” Brown said. “But I am not sure all the contracts can be signed by that time, so we shall see.”

An earlier start date could be good, so that the work can be done by the completion date in October, the engineer said.

“I fully realize this will be no piece of cake,” Brown said. “It will be loud, dusty and disruptive. But we are going to do our best to accomodate the businesses as best we can.”