Fairfield seeks grant for $1.8M road project

Fairfield has sought a grant to help fund a $1.8 million road project planned for next year to eliminate backups on Nilles Road and to improve a section of Gray Road.

The project would take place in two sections, said City Manager Art Pizzano. One would be on Nilles from May Avenue to Ohio 4, and the other would be on Gray Road from Lake Michigan Drive to John Gray Road. The Nilles section will also include Stadium Drive, near the high school’s athletic field.

The work on Nilles will include resurfacing, plus the addition of a left turn lane into the Arbor Pointe apartment complex at Buckhead Drive. As it stands, traffic tends to back up on Nilles as drivers stop to turn into those apartments, said City Engineer Ben Mann.

“We want to widen it just enough to have room for one or two cars to sit and turn left without causing a back-up. You’ll see people not realize someone’s going to stop, and dart around them. It’s not the safest situation,” Mann said. “We’ll get a tremendous improvement of flow through there.”

Gray Road is one of Fairfield’s most rural, narrow roads and has eroded in some sections, so the work there will include widening, resurfacing, and base failure repairs as necessary, he said.

“It’s really hilly terrain with a lot of curves in it. There’s a lot of sections that are pretty narrow, and because it’s so hilly, the edge of the road is kind of breaking away. It’s not very forgiving if you were to run off the road, so certainly, there’s a lot of that we want to add shoulder to,” said Mann.

The work on both projects is projected to start next summer and finish by early 2016.

Applying for the grant is a standard process. This is an Ohio Public Works Commission Grant, with money being set aside for road projects, and Fairfield has usually been successful in getting these grants, Mann said. This grant would pay for $600,000, which is about 30 percent of the project.

The two road projects were taken together because “it makes for one good-sized project. There are advantages to having the same contractor on both as far as coordination,” said Mann. “By doing a bigger project, you get economy of scale and better pricing on some things.”

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