Escanaba’s Ludington Street is receiving its final touches this week as the two-year downtown infrastructure project nears completion and the street prepares to reopen Wednesday.
Crews spent the summer replacing infrastructure beneath the roadway, including sanitary, sewer and water mains. The completed street features a new traffic design, bike lanes and, in portions of the downtown, bump-outs and stamped concrete.
Project Manager Darren Pionk with C2AE said the final streetscape elements are helping bring the project together.
“I think Ludington Street is a beautiful-looking downtown street right now,” Pionk said. “I think these final touches of the trees and the benches and what was picked out by the DDA in regards to these products, I think it is going to pop and bring this whole project together.”
Most of the streetscape improvements are located between 2nd and 10th streets. Grants focusing on streetscape were used by the city along with funds from the Downtown Development Authority.
Pionk said the length of Ludington Street and the different features incorporated throughout the project made it difficult to use the same streetscape design along the entire downtown corridor.
“It’s such a long street, and there are different amenities throughout the whole area,” he said. “It is very costly to do the same streetscape throughout the whole project. There’s going to be some transitions and buffers, so I think we handled it pretty well, in regards to the flow of Ludington Street.”
The project represents a major two-year, 16-block infrastructure revitalization of downtown Escanaba.
In addition to the streetscape improvements, the project replaced aging sanitary, sewer and water mains and included replacement of the lift station at the east end of Ludington Street.
Escanaba Water and Wastewater Superintendent Jeff Lampi said the infrastructure improvements will serve the community for decades.
“We’ve been talking about it for 20 years, 30 years, about redoing the streets, and I think everyone is going to be ecstatic,” Lampi said. “We replaced old, old sewer, 1880s sewer. We replaced the lift station at the end of Ludington Street. That put the wastewater system in that area good for 50, 60, 80 years. We are in good shape there.”
Crews are completing the final planting of trees and installation of light poles and traffic lights before the street reopens Wednesday.
The city will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Escanaba Marketplace to celebrate the reopening of Ludington Street.
CAPTION 1: Amenities such as benches and bike racks are being installed on Ludington Street from 2nd to 10th Streets as part of a new streetscape design for the downtown. Other features include bump outs, stamped cement and bike lane.
CAPTION 2: Escanaba Electric Department is finishing hooking up light poles on Ludington Street before the street opens on Wednesday. Other work remaining includes tree planting and sign installation.
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