Digging up Chancery Street: City workers help utility companies put lines underground

By AMY SATTERWHITE / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

Front, from left, Martin Hillis of Ben Lomand telephone, Trent Young and Frank Southard of the city’s Public Works Department establish a working rhythm laying conduit in preparation for relocating downtown utility lines underground.

Preliminary utility work that precedes the start of construction for the Main Street McMinnville downtown revitalization project began Monday on Chancery Street.

Workers from McMinnville Electric System and other utility companies are expected to replace overhead lines located on Chancery Street between Morford and Colville streets with updated underground lines. The city’s Public Works Department began digging a trench to make that happen Monday.

The utility lines on Main Street are also expected to be relocated underground when that project gets started officially later this month. The Main Street project engineers requested the lines on Chancery near the Main Street intersection also go underground for aesthetic purposes, according to MES general manager Rodney Boyd.

Workers will be placing conduit underground to start, which will cause traffic to be squeezed into one lane in the Chancery Street area. Workers will place conduit underground first.

“Conduit is the only thing that will be installed at this time. Once the new conduit is in place, each company will then began the laborious process of transferring their lines from the poles into these underground conduits,” Boyd added.

Officials said last week they were uncertain as to how long the process would take, although some estimated the project would take about a week depending upon the weather. Boyd said Tuesday workers had run into 16- to 18-inch-thick asphalt that was slowing down the process.

According to assistant public works director Brad Hennessee, public works crews expected to proceed south on the sidewalks on Chancery Street.

“We will start in the sidewalk at MES and the Public Works Department will remove the sidewalk and the underlying material down to where the utilities will put the conduit in.

“We’ll basically tear it out and then get out of the utilities’ way and let them lay their own conduit. Then Public Works will come back behind them and refill the hole. We’ll make the sidewalks passable and at a later date. We’ll come back and re-concrete them,” Hennessee added.

This week, crews were expected to proceed southward up the sidewalk, cross Morford Street near MES, go through the sidewalk next to the First United Methodist Church, cross the street at Main Street and go down the sidewalk until they reach Colville Street.

Main Street officials have been careful to say the utility work is only prep work and is not part of the Main Street project per se. The ground breaking ceremony for the Main Street project is expected to take place Aug. 16 at 10 a.m. pending any last-minute changes, according to Mayor Royce Davenport.