Ohiopyle work wrapping up as season set to begin
Sandstone slows work on a new parking lot
OHIOPYLE, Pa. — It’s called Pottsville sandstone and right now it’s the only thing standing in the way of finishing the first year of renovations at Ohiopyle State Park by Memorial Day.
Pottsville is an extremely hard rock formation first identified in Pottsville, Schuylkill County, and common in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Alabama. The rock is so hard that crews for Plum Contracting Inc. are about 10 days behind schedule clearing the site of a new parking lot near the visitors center, making it highly unlikely the lot will be ready for the traditional opening of the park’s busy season next week.
“We’re a week-and-a-half behind schedule,” Bill Beaumariage, PennDOT’s project manager, said Thursday as he stood above relocated Sugarloaf Road watching a hoe ram and four excavators scurrying throughout the block-long site to prepare the parking lot. As the hoe ram chiseled away at the rock, excavators carried it away or dug in other areas to prepare the site.
“I challenge you to find a busier construction site anywhere in this area. They’re doing everything they can.”
If that lot isn’t ready by next weekend, the park will get by, said Ken Bisbee, operations manager, and then get a break with less busy days until schools let out for the summer. Signs will direct visitors to an auxiliary lot on the hill above the regular lot, he said.
“I think my rangers are going to be as tolerant as we can be with where people can park,” Mr. Bisbee said. “As long as we can get an ambulance through, we’ll be OK.
“If we can get through Memorial Day weekend, we probably have a week and a half window to get done before school ends. We have a little wiggle room.”
The Department of Transportation joined with the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources on this two-year, $12.4 million project designed to improve safety at the popular rafting and trail site along the Youghiogheny River. The work is scheduled to be done during less busy fall and winter months so it interferes with fewer of the 1.5 million people who visit the park every year.
Work began in November for the first part of the project, which involved relocating Sugarloaf so it no longer splits the former gravel parking lots; consolidating the lots into one large, paved area; repaving Route 381 from the visitors center to Route 40; and temporarily moving utilities to prepare the small bridge at the entrance to Ohiopyle for reconstruction in September.
The only part not likely to be finished is the parking lot, which provides one of the most valuable commodities in the only Pennsylvania town completely surrounded by a state park. Mr. Beaumariage said crews began excavating 30,000 cubic yards of dirt and rock from the old parking lot in mid-December, but it has been slow going because of the Pottsville formation.
Contractors signed paperwork with PennDOT before they submitted bids last year acknowledging the rock was at the site, Mr. Beaumariage said, but this is among the most difficult formations he’s run into in 28 years with PennDOT. The rock is so hard crews have regularly damaged the bits on hydraulic hoe rams and the teeth of excavators since they began digging, he said.
“We did know [Pottsville rock] was here, but until you can uncover it, it’s kind of an unknown factor,” he said.
The parking lot is designed with a permeable surface to control runoff. That means crews have to dig down about 15 feet to create a basin and line it with large rocks to hold rainwater and slowly release it.
Along the way, engineers have changed specs to allow deeper digging in softer areas of the site to avoid some of the rock.
When it is done, the new lot will have 100 spaces. Technically, that’s only about a half dozen more than the two gravel lots used to have, but Mr. Beaumariage said he expects about 20 percent more people to be able to use the lined spaces because of the haphazard way some visitors parked on the gravel.
Mr. Bisbee said park visitors will have to get by this summer and at least most of next without a changing building in the main lot. Instead, the park will place four portable changing stations — think portable toilets with a bench instead of bathroom facilities — in the lot and can add more as needed.
The park project has caused some consternation among the town’s four dozen residents and parts of the business community. Jim King, who has worked at White Water Adventures since 1988, said he’s looking forward to the new parking lot and easier access to the boating suppliers, but some hassle is part of the cost of progress.
“The parking’s not there yet — none of it will be by Memorial Day,” he said as he prepared for the season by painting the exterior of the business directly beside the parking lot. “For the older folks, the work is disturbing. When it’s done, it will be effective.”
Once this season is over, crews expect to begin work Sept. 3 on the second, more dramatic part of the project: upgrading the bridge, digging a pedestrian tunnel under Route 381 and moving bike lanes off the highway and onto park property.
Mr. Beaumariage said crews will close one side of the bridge for reconstruction between Sept. 3 and the end of the year, then do the other half from Jan. 15 to April. The new bridge will have wider sidewalks.
In the fall, Route 381 will be paved from Sugarloaf south and in the spring from Sugarloaf north to the bridge. When the bike lanes are moved off the street, parking will be available on both sides and bright crosswalks will be added.
Crews also will start the tunnel
between the visitors center and the parking lot as soon as the season ends. It will have a 10-foot-high opening, be wide enough for two groups with rafts to pass side by side and have a switchback ramp from the parking lot to accommodate wheelchairs. The goal is to take people carrying rafts and other boating equipment off the road to avoid near misses with vehicles that park officials say happen regularly.
To allow the tunnel work, traffic will be diverted from Route 381 through the new parking lot.
Once all of the road work is completed, Mr. Bisbee said, the park will begin construction next year on the new, heated bathroom and changing house that will be installed at the rear south end of the parking lot. Utilities already are in place.
“We can’t start until they are done, but then we will be ready to go,” he said.