Construction is almost complete on a new connector road between Admiral Fitch Avenue and Gurnet Road. (File image)
BRUNSWICK — Construction on the Cook’s Corner connector road is “cranking away,” and drivers should be able to start using the new road sometime in mid-September, according to Steve Levesque, executive director of the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority.
The majority of work will be completed by Aug. 15, Town Manager John Eldridge said Tuesday, with smaller tasks like striping and some landscaping to be done after.
Construction on the 1,500-foot road linking Admiral Fitch Avenue with Gurnet Road began in late November and has been “going well,” Levesque said. The new road will create another access point to Brunswick Landing, hopefully alleviating some of the traffic congestion in Cook’s Corner in the process.
The road will have three 11-foot wide travel lanes, a 5-foot wide bicycle lane on both sides of the road, and a 6-foot wide sidewalk with a 6-foot esplanade on either side, the Times Record reported last year. Street lighting is included and the road will bring utilities to some adjacent properties. There have not been any major setbacks and construction has stayed within the budget, Eldridge said.
As redevelopment efforts continue at the former Naval base, outpacing original estimates, and the number of businesses increases, so does the traffic around the Landing. Last month, the redevelopment authority reported that over 1,900 jobs had been created, with Wayfair, Pathways, SaviLinx and Molnlycke Health Care together employing 848 full- and part-time of those positions. The road has been part of the redevelopment authority’s reuse master plan from the beginning, Levesque said, and will serve as another access point to Brunswick Landing, opening access to some parcels of land that were previously landlocked, allowing for further development he said in an earlier interview.
This is the primary goal of the road, Eldridge said, and there is currently only one entrance to the Landing, which Levesque has estimated will have 2,000 employees by 2020.
Town officials are meeting with Levesque and other stakeholders in the Cooks Corner area to help coordinate development and mitigate some of the other traffic problems in the area, Eldridge added, but the connector road is not one of the primary solutions. This being said, he added that the hope is that some people heading toward East Brunswick, Harpswell and Route 1 will use the new entrance/exit point in the future.
The road has not yet been named, and Eldridge said the town has received many suggestions and is currently sorting through them to find one that is both fitting and not confusing with the names of existing roads.
Bidding for the contract came in at $2.2 million, lower than the estimated $2.5 million project cost. With a $200,000 contribution from the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority and about $815,850 from the Maine Department of Transportation via a Business Partnership Initiative grant, the town is footing about $1.2 million.
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