The three multimillion-dollar projects in Bridgton will slow down for the winter months but should be completed in the spring, according to Town Manager Bob Peabody. The upper Main Street streetscape project was completed earlier this year, seen above in September. Emily Bader / Lakes Region Weekly file photo
BRIDGTON — Infrastructure improvements and renovations to Bridgton’s Main Street and wastewater system are nearly complete, say town officials.
“The projects are slowing down for winter and we’ll be picking them back up in the spring,” said Town Manager Bob Peabody at Tuesday night’s select board meeting.
With the town celebrating the completion of the upper Main Street improvements in September of last year, all that’s left is the “punch list” of remaining items for the lower Main Street streetscape and wastewater projects, which Peabody said the town hopes to complete by next June.
“It’s nothing, I would say, earth-shattering, just those little things that you have, the clean-up stuff after a big project,” Peabody said Wednesday morning.
Peabody told the Lakes Region Weekly last year that these improvements have been in the works for at least five years.
He said that although these three projects are separate entities with different engineers, there is some overlap in the construction plans.
The town has contracts with engineering consultants HEB Engineers of North Conway, New Hampshire, for the streetscape improvements and with Woodard & Curran of Portland for the wastewater improvements.
The lower Main Street project was delayed when Central Maine Power did not move utilities polls in time to get paving done before the winter, he said, but that they plan to “fire up as soon as we can get going” next year.
Residents approved three multimillion-dollar projects – wastewater and upper and lower Main Street streetscape – at a special town meeting in November 2018, totaling nearly $18 million in bond issues.
The town also received a total of $12.2 million in loans and $10.6 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s rural development program and a $2 million grant from the state’s Clean Water Fund for the wastewater project, as well as a $500,000 grant from Maine DOT for the streetscape project.
The projects will cost Bridgton taxpayers who own a home with a $150,000 assessed value less than $100 a year, according to an October 2018 press release from the town.
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