Broadway ready to be made over

By Dan Hust
MONTICELLO — The Broadway widening and resurfacing project in Monticello will finally get under way this spring.
The Monticello Village Board announced Monday and the NYS Department of Transportation’s Charlie Walker confirmed yesterday that the DOT has opened the bids and plans to award the project to the lowest bidder, Fahs Construction Group.
The Binghamton firm completed the Pleasant Street renovation last year to local acclaim and is now seeking to do the same on Broadway – from about Pleasant Street west through the business district to a point near Jefferson Street – for $12,173,000.50.
Walker said the project has an expected completion date of November 2010, though the landscaping – grass and shrubbery in a center median and trees along soon-to-be-narrowed sidewalks – will be a separate contract and likely be undertaken and finished in the spring and summer of 2011.
Residents can expect noise, delays and detours for the next few years, but after numerous false starts and a controversy last year over the removal of decorative lighting, Mayor Gordon Jenkins is eager to see the rough thoroughfare finally overhauled.
“On April 1 they should be starting,” he remarked. “It’s going to happen.”