Looking south along Crocker from the corner of Valley View on Wednesday afternoon.
North Albany residents in the surrouonding neighborhoods are wondering when the Crocker Lane reconstruction is going to be finally finished. The answer I got was that the contractor’s crew is working to get done as fast as they can.
“I live on the corner of Crocker Ln. & Cluster Oak in N. Albany,” John Campbell wrote me last week. “As we are now in December and the road project is still not finished, I was wondering if a new update was available.”
Once again I asked Chris Cerklewski, the engineer in Albany Public Works who is overseeing the project. He reminded me that the original contract completion date was Nov. 3. But “several minor items” pushed the target to Nov. 13, and the contractor now is being assessed “liquidated damages” for each day past Nov. 13 until the street is finished in accordance with the contract. (He had told me earlier that the damages were $800 per day.)
Why the delays, I wondered. “The contractor,” Cerklewski wrote, “has not been able to direct as many resources to the project as they had anticipated when the project was bid.” But, he added, “the contractor continues to work to complete the project as quickly as possible as weather permits this time of year.”
Carter & Company, of Salem, was awarded the Crocker contract in May based on its bid of $1,861,694.
On Wednesday, signs announced upcoming dates for the closure of part of Crocker. So it looks as though the completion date for the entire project is still a ways off. (hh)
It looks really great. It’s well lit and driving on it is smooth and easy. But now that it is completely closed, again we have to again drive three miles out of our way to get to town. As you know, those of us who live in this area have been doing this since last June. I know there are far worse things in life but this is getting old.
Awesome penalty on an 1.8 million contract. If it was $8000 per day the road would be finished.
I was thinking the same thing. They clearly see the penalty as chump change. We’re coming up on six months to repave and add sidewalks to a short section of road. This project is obviously at the bottom of Carter and Company’s priority list. Let’s hope the city revisits the penalty when a contractor is selected to finish the rest of Crocker in 10 or 20 years.
Actually that fine can make the project lose money pretty fast. When all is said and done, the profit from the job is quite small, and assuming they are a month or more late to completion, thats $30,000 they aren’t getting back.
Please “excuse” my poor understanding of development ideas, codes, procedures (did I leave anything out?) BUT why weren’t these poorly designed roads dealt with way back when??!! Like before development. Lay out the proper roads & put a price tag on each lot sold to pay for said road improvements. Seems like the age old problem of putting the cart way, way, way out in front of the horse that eventually pays for it!!! There will still be NO proper fix for the bottle neck intersection at Crocker & Gibson Hill…!!!!
The bottle neck is a time of day issue. Not all that dissimilar to east bound traffic on 20 entering downtown Albany. I try to avoid both at rush times! Not always successful.
Thank you for the update. As others have said, while there are certainly much bigger problems, nearly six months of a detour that isn’t really changing much in the end (from a user perspective) is getting very old.