New Town Boulevard Project Moves Ahead

The St. Charles City Council Tuesday night gave the go-ahead for the long-awaited reconstruction of New Town Boulevard authorizing a contract with Kuesel Excavating Co., Inc. for up to $1.9 million to do the project.

A detour during construction will restrict access with New Town Boulevard becoming a one-lane going one-way road into the development and exit from the Boulevard to Route B or to Boschertown Road on the southeast but residents and business owners seem to be taking the inconvenience it will bring in stride.

“Actually, to be quite honest, the roadway is low and is really dangerous especially during the wintertime and when it’s wet,” resident Mary Schmidt said.  “It gets slick and people have slid off of it. It definitely could use some repair.”

Schmidt said she has seen several vehicles in ditches along the roadway in the short time she’s lived in New Town. 

“I think it’s a really good thing they actually addressed that,” she said. “The good news is there’s a back way that’s accessible for New Town residents to get onto Highway 370. It’s not too much farther.”

Charles Luebke, owner of Dwell in Designs, a specialty shop in New Town, said the one lane into New Town is “certainly better” than the city’s original proposal to have access to the development from the southeast during construction with a one-way, one-lane exit onto New Town Boulevard.

“I definitely have some concerns,” he said. “Any inconvenience is going to have the potential to keep customers away but you have to look at the longer term. I’m just glad they’re finally doing it. That road needs to be improved.”

Tim Busse, senior vice president and director of architecture for Whittaker Builders, New Town’s developer, said Whittaker actually suggested the city switch its planned ingress and egress routes to “protect” New Town businesses. 

“They switched it around so our businesses will have a better chance of having people find their businesses,” he said.  New Town residents are familiar enough with the options of getting into and out of the development to handle the restrictions, he said.

“The people we’re concerned about most were the people patronizing our businesses,” he said.  “For example, if you’re going to dinner at (a New Town restaurant) or for a glass of wine at the , if it’s very circuitous to get into New Town, you might decide to go some somewhere else.”

 The idea is that once customers get to a business, they can be told of exit options when they are ready to leave, he said. 

The long-awaited project will bring improvements to the two-lane country road that has become the main entrance into New Town, a development with about 2,500 residents. 

“It’s got so much more traffic than it was ever designed to carry,” Stephen Noonan, senior project manager for the city of St. Charles, said. “It’s not in great shape. We’ve been kind of patching it the last couple of years knowing this project was coming.”

Some 5,000 vehicles now use the road with up to 9,000 projected to use it after the development is complete, he said.  

It’s not yet clear how long the traffic restrictions will be in place, Noonan said. Once a construction schedule is developed, an open house in late June will give people more details about the routes during the project.

The contractor has 300 calendar days to finish the project, but restricted access will only be in effect for part of that time because time on the front and back ends won’t require it, he said.  

The contractor would get a $60,000 bonus for completing the project in 180 days and a $30,000 bonus if completion is between 180 and 220 days, he added.

“The good thing for us is less inconvenience for our residents getting in and out and the good thing for them is they get a little bit of extra money,” he said.  “They kind of weigh out whether it’s worth it for them and they have the manpower to do it.”

Crews will tear out the existing road, widening it from two lanes to three and elevating it above the 100-year flood elevation making it four to five feet higher in some areas, Noonan said. 

The “100-year flood” designation is a bit of a misnomer, he added. What it really means is there is “a one percent chance of a flood occurring in a given year,” he added. 

The new roadway will be concrete instead of asphalt, Noonan said.  Some stretches will have turn lanes while others will have grass medians for access control “to make it more of an arterial road less of a residential collector street in the future,” he said.

The reconstruction will make the road safer and allow it to handle the increased traffic it has seen since New Town was developed, Noonan said. 

 “New Town is going to keep growing so traffic is only going to increase on the road,” he said.

Schmidt, a former city of St. Louis resident and veteran of the delays and detours major road construction projects bring, is unfazed.  “I remember (Highway) 40 taking forever,” she said.

“I don’t see it as a huge inconvenience as much as it is a positive for traveling in the long run,” she added. “I think having the advantage of a safe road residents can drive on when it’s all said and done is pretty much a win-win.”

Luebke seemed to sum up the attitude of New Town residents and business owners toward the project and the temporary restricted access into the development:

“Sometimes you have to put up with some inconvenience to get something better.”