Gasmain going in at 23Mile Rd. intersection

Crews are expected to be on the job Oct. 5 through Oct. 15.

Motorists might want to avoid the intersection near 23Mile Road andM-53 this week as crews are starting the most significant portion of Shelby Township’s $20 million Shelby Township Road Program.

“This has been a long time coming, and I want to thank Clerk Stan Grot for working with the state and getting $1.2 million to make this possible,” Shelby Township Supervisor Rick Stathakis said in a news release. “I want to thank Mr. Gordie Wilson, township engineer at AEW, for pushing it as hard as possible.”

And I can’t thank Macomb County Department of Roads Director Bryan Santo and Township Trustee Vince Viviano enough for getting this done,” Stathakis added. “Without Mr. Santo and Trustee Viviano, it would not have gotten to the finish line. Truly, this was a team effort.”

The Macomb County Department of Roads will have traffic control measures in place Oct. 5, and crews will begin work Oct. 9. Estimates have construction completed in November 2020 and full restoration done in spring 2021.

The improvement work will take place at the intersection of 23 Mile Road and Shelby Parkway/Corporate Drive.

It will include installing dual left-turn lanes for eastbound 23 Mile Road traffic to northbound Shelby Parkway, widening lanes on Shelby Parkway and Corporate

Drive, traffic signal improvements, asphalt overlay and restoration. All roads will be open with lane restrictions during construction. Flagging operations will direct traffic when necessary.

Shelby Township paid $100,000 to cover 50% of initial engineering costs, which are not covered by a Transportation Economic Development Fund grant from the Michigan Department of Transportation. The county road department covered the other 50% of preliminary engineering costs. The state grant money will total approximately $1.2 million to offset $2,050,114 in construction costs. The township and county contributed $427,000 to construction costs.

“We needed to get this done, traffic is horrendous, and I knew the state had funding sitting there,” Grot said, adding that the $1.2 million for the project came through the efforts of state Rep. ShaneHernandez, who visited the intersection and saw the amount of traffic in and around the area.

“When I came out here, I looked at the bottleneck, and I sawhowit affected local businesses,” Hernandez said. “Being the chair on the transportation committee at the time, I knew there was a fund available that could address this. We went to work being able to protect that fund in the budget and redirect those dollars to Shelby Township.”

The project became a pressing need in recent years as the township welcomedmore than 1,700new jobs on Shelby Parkway, filling more than 1.3 million square feet of new industrial and manufacturing space.

Among the new businesses moving into the area is SAPA Transmission Inc., which is scheduled to open a 110,000-square-foot North American headquarters this year. SAPA also maintains a 48,000-square-foot research and development facility off of Shelby Parkway. The two facilities will account for a more than $40 million investment in the township and 223 new engineering, manufacturing and administrative jobs by the end of 2022.

While it was not a road improvement project, the work by Consumers Energy to install a new natural gas main parallel to 23 Mile Road between the M-53 Expressway and Van Dyke Ave. has impacted traffic in the center of the township.

Representatives from Consumers Energy estimate that the projectwill be complete by Oct. 15, and the main will be operational by the end of October.

“On our best day, 23Mile Road is a chore to navigate because of all the successful businesses and the traffic from the M-53 Expressway,” Stathakis said. “Unfortunately, we have these two critical projects overlapping, so we are asking residents and motorists to arrange their schedules and drive times to account for significant delays in this area throughout October.”

For more information on the project, contact the Macomb County Department of Roads at 586-4638671 or email geninfo@rcmcweb.org.