Buried utilities stall Mesa Drive project
First it was July. Then October.
Finally, palpable signs of progress suggest Mesa and Hunter Contracting Co. will meet their next target for wrapping up the massive street project at Mesa Drive and Southern Avenue. That target is late December. For drivers, merchants and neighborhood residents, it has been an agonizingly long time since construction began in early 2012 with an estimated time frame of 17 months. Mesa’s engineering staff told
in February that underground utility problems already had snagged work enough to delay completion for three months. Now, they have tacked two more months on to that.
Mayor Scott Smith, a former contractor, followed the project closely and said buried utilities created havoc for crews.
And he acknowledged the city could have done a better job informing people about why the delays were happening.
If a contractor misses deadlines because of its own malfeasance, Smith said the city will impose penalties. But none are contemplated in this case, he said, because even at the outset Mesa knew it would be a challenging project.
“This was much more than a street project,” Smith said. “I think we did waterlines, gas
‘‘ This was much more than a street project.”
Mayor of Mesa, talking about construction at Mesa Drive and Southern Avenue lines, storm drain and sewer. ... A lot of that infrastructure below the ground is 40, 50, even pushing 60 years old.”
Further, he said, “There was a lot of stuff that wasn’t on any map” because in those days, nobody made records of where utility lines were laid.
That means workers can’t move ahead without making sure they’re not going to cause problems to utility customers.
In some cases, no one would even claim the buried infrastructure.
“Any time you get that situation, it causes delays,” he said. “It’s horrible. We hate it. Having owned a business that was significantly impacted by street construction, I know what it’s like. But it’s the nature of the game when you start digging up old streets.”
The city has posted updates on the engineering department’s page at mesaaz.gov, but officials have issued few news releases about the project since it began.
“Sometimes we’re not as good communicating what’s going on as it’s going on as we should be, because it can be really frustrating,” Smith said.