A Shaw Brothers Construction crew works Monday at the Gorham intersection of Main Street and Libby Avenue in an upgrade of Route 25 in Gorham and Westbrook. The target date for the project’s completion is Aug. 1, 2020. Two traffic lanes will stay open in the daytime and an alternating lane will be open nights. Staff photo by Robert Lowell
GORHAM — After the state shelved the project for two years, the long awaited reconstruction of Route 25 through Gorham Village is under way and now includes resurfacing part of the highway in Westbrook.
The project is costing more than $8.9 million, according to the Maine Department of Transportation. Shaw Brothers Construction of Gorham is the contractor and was the sole bidder on the project.
The five-mile Route 25 project runs from the most southeastern intersection of Westbrook’s Conant Street along Route 25 through Gorham Village to a point near the highway’s intersection with Cressey Road in Gorham.
“We’re paving all the way to Westbrook,” Jon Shaw, president of Shaw Brothers, said this week.
In addition to paving, work in Gorham includes traffic signal upgrades, replacement of some water mains more than a century old, and drainage and safety improvements. The project is expected to be completed by Aug. 1 of next year.
Shaw said paving will be done mostly at night. Two travel lanes along Route 25 will remain open daytime and the road will be reduced to a single, alternating lane at night.
Construction on Westbrook’s New Gorham Road that also links the city with Gorham will compound efforts of commuters trying to dodge construction zones.
Gorham voters approved the town’s contribution for the Route 25 rebuild in a referendum. “The town’s share of the Main Street, Route 25 project is $600,000 that was approved by the voters as a bond three years ago,” Gorham Town Manager Ephrem Paraschak said.
Westbrook City Administrator Jerre Bryant said Wednesday that the resurfacing portion of the project in Westbrook will be entirely funded with state and federal money.
In conjunction with the rebuild in Gorham, the Portland Water District will be replacing some archaic water pipes in the center of town, Shaw said.
“We are replacing 1,300 feet of old 8-inch, 1895 water main at a cost $1.3 million,” Michelle Clements, water district spokeswoman, said this week.
The scope of the work has expanded from original state transportation plans to rebuild 1.5 miles of the highway in Gorham from the intersection of Main Street and Johnson Road to its intersection with Cressey Road.
Shaw said the state’s latest plan eliminates an earlier requirement to pulverize leftover sections of an old concrete highway below the tar surface.
Paul Merrill, a spokesman for DOT, said Wednesday the only concrete to be broken up would be to allow for water main replacement. A concrete highway had been constructed through Gorham from Westbrook about 1930.
The Gorham rebuild stalled as DOT failed to award the lone bidder Shaw Brothers contracts when the project was up for bid the past two years. The company bid $7.45 million last year, up from $6.6 million in 2017.
The original rebuild in Gorham was estimated to cost $2.2 million when Gorham voters approved borrowing the town’s share.
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