Lead contractor Mountain Construction is promising to maintain access to all businesses during the construction work set to start today (Tuesday) along U.S. Highway 14A between Blair’s Super Market and the railroad tracks on the edge of Ralston. 

Matt Jeremiah, head of Mountain Construction quality control, and others spoke to a room full of business owners and other interested community members at Powell City Hall on a cold, windy Monday morning.

“One of our main priorities is getting everything done in a timely manner, but also making sure that the public has safe access to all the businesses and everywhere they need to get to,” Jeremiah said. “So we’ll have temporary ADA ramps, and we’ll make sure that we work with business owners and staff to ensure that the public has access to businesses at all times.”

That includes access to the two supermarkets on the north side of the highway. Owners from Blair’s who attended the meeting favored a proposal to have work fully block off one highway entrance at a time, while leaving the other fully accessible during sidewalk concrete work and, later, roadwork.

At Albertsons, work will include creating a new entryway east of the current one which will line up with a lane between parking spaces. It’s expected to allow for better traffic flow. 

“We’re building a whole new one to the east,” said Wyoming Department of Transportation Resident Engineer Todd Frost of Cody. “So for the most part, we can keep the old one open until the new one’s ready to be going.”

Construction will be done in two-block sections for concrete work, which will take about two weeks each. During that time concrete will be torn out and replaced and necessary ADA upgrades made. 

A one-lane closure will be in place 24 hours a day during that time. 

Jeremiah said he’d reach out to each affected business ahead of each two-block stretch.

“And then once we get all that taken care of, and we’re getting ready to start working on the actual asphalt, we’re going to close down one side of the road for about a mile outside of town, and then we’ll move over, take that all the way to Ralston,” he said. “[Then] move back over, finish that up, and then we’ll start paving one side at a time from Ralston all the way back to the edge of town, more or less all the way into town to Blair’s.”

Kim Wilson, general manager of Mountain Construction, said as a local company their goal is to do a good job and be as efficient as possible.

“The other biggest thing is, obviously, it’s spring,” she said. “We never know what’s going to happen, so we’re going to do our best … So we’ll try and work efficiently in this spring weather that we have.”