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Contractor reports underground challenges, city hopes to meet Sept. 5 completion for Northwest Main Street phase
Summary
The city’s construction manager reported crews have completed about two-thirds of sanitary sewer and more than half of storm sewer work on the Northwest Main Street project but have encountered deep voids and utility conflicts that are delaying progress; the contractor is targeting a Sept. 5, 2025 completion.
Colin Watts, construction manager with Manning & Smith Group, updated the City of Geneva council on the Northwest Main Street sewer and street reconstruction project, reporting progress and subsurface challenges that have slowed work.
Watts said crews have installed about 1,954 feet of sanitary sewer (roughly two-thirds of the Sanitary Lane sewer) and about 2,000 feet of storm sewer (a little over half of the planned storm work). He reported 29 sanitary/storm structures installed and lateral connections at about 40% up to the main line between Legal and Lockwood; the remaining work runs west of Lockwood and will resume when winter conditions end.
Watts described the biggest difficulty as encountering voids beneath the roadway caused by erosion into failing, older sewer tiles and crushed pipes; crews have at times excavated 13 to 60 feet to address those voids, a process that requires shoring, temporary stone placements and dewatering. The contractor has reinstalled dewatering equipment as warmer weather arrives; Watts said crews are digging as deep as 16 feet in portions of the corridor and that a high water table requires active dewatering. He also cited utility conflicts common in older cities that require coordination with utility companies and occasional workarounds.
On schedule, Watts said the original contract’s completion date was Sept. 5, 2025, and the contractor is targeting that date. He acknowledged the project has accumulated “probably a couple dozen days” of delay that the contract allows the contractor to count toward excusable days and that—based on current awarded delays and weather days—the contractor could extend into October without triggering liquidated damages. City staff and the contractor are pursuing recovery scheduling and scope-savings measures where possible to limit change-order costs.
Council members and residents asked about visible delays and the need for more public information; council members said the technical details—deep excavations and dewatering—help explain why work can take longer than visible surface progress suggests. The council scheduled a progress meeting for April 9 in council chambers and requested a follow-up with detailed accounting of change-order costs and any budgetary impacts.
