LAUREL HILL — When the school bus drives down City Councilman Daniel Lane’s street these days, he hardly notices it.
Until last week, that wasn’t the case.
“You’d think the back end was going to fall off,” Lane said. “You can’t hear it now.”
That’s because Fourth Street, where Lane lives, and two other roads, have finally been repaved after years of discussion and several failed applications for grant money.
City officials said the paving was funded by a $600,000 state Community Development Block Grant.
After a year of engineering planning, equipment from C.W. Roberts Contracting moved into Laurel Hill two weeks ago.
MAJOR SCALE
“We started applying three years ago" for the grant, City Clerk Nita Miller said. “We applied two or three times, and then it was approved in September of 2014.”
“To my knowledge, since incorporation in 1952, nothing like this has been done before,” City Council Chairman Larry Hendren said. “All they’ve done in the past is fill some potholes.”
Lifelong resident Harold Jones said he remembers a later paving in the 1960s because of a childhood injury received from Steel Mill Creek Road’s previous rough surface. While he was bouncing down the street on the way home from school, “My bicycle chain slipped and it took off the end of my toe,” Jones said.
But this is the city’s first large-scale paving project.
By working with C.W. Roberts, the city eked out extra paving than originally requested under the grant, while still coming in within the $600,000 budget.
Fourth Street, for example, was only supposed to be paved from State Road 85 to Park Avenue.
“Fourth Street was the one they had to break into two segments,” Mayor Robby Adams said. “Luckily, C.W. Roberts came in under the allowable maximum that we had, so we were able to do all of it.”
OTHER PROJECTS
Other newly paved streets are Second Street and New Ebenezer Road, on which paving was extended past Industrial Park almost to the city limits by judicious use of materials.
On the south end, New Ebenezer’s paving was supposed to stop at Third Avenue, but was extended along Third to S.R. 85.
“They (CW Roberts engineers) didn’t like the look of that surface,” City Clerk Nita Miller said. “They paved out to behind the Tom Thumb.”
“The more they can do, the better for our citizens,” Hendren said.
Hendren said though originally scheduled to take a week, the project was delayed by rainy weather. The segment of Fourth Street in front of Laurel Hill School’s track remained closed to traffic over the weekend until weather cleared up.
That slight delay didn’t bother residents, who waited decades to have their streets repaved.
“If you’d been over by my house when those pavers came through, you would’ve seen me out there doing the jitterbug,” Lane joked.
Laurel Hill officials are eyeing repaving Sunnyside Avenue for as much of its length between State Road 85 and Third Street as possible.
City Clerk Nita Miller said the city has worked with Okaloosa County officials to resurface the street, one of two main access roads to Laurel Hill School. Miller said the city hopes to start soliciting construction bids in mid-December.
County Public Works staffers are expected to provide a price to do the paving work, but a backlog in county road projects could delay construction more than a year.
If an outside contractor can beat the county’s bid, the city would probably contract with them to get the project underway as soon as possible, Miller said.
NEXT: SUNNYSIDE AVENUE
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Laurel Hill roads re-paved for the first time since the 1960s