As Broadway Project Finally Begins, Project Team Plans Public Info Meeting

After years of delay thanks to a federal funding backlog, long-suffering motorists and business owners along Broadway in Newport soon will finally see crews start to reconstruct busy thoroughfare along with major improvements to pedestrian infrastructure.

Officials from the state Department of Transportation and its contractor, Cardi Corporation, will be on hand at the Newport Public Library on Thursday morning to provide an update on the plan and describe the upcoming construction schedule and activities.

The meeting will start at 9:45 a.m.

The work is limited from Farewell Street to Bliss Road with the full reconstruction of Broadway along with 85 feet of Marlborough Street. Full reconstruction includes the installation of new asphalt, sidewalks, a granite curb, raised crosswalks, landscaping, decorative street lighting and road striping.

To the north, Broadway from Cranston Avenue to Bliss Road will have the top layer removed and replaced with new asphalt and road striping.

Funding for the project has been stalled since Federal Highway Trust Fund money stopped being doled out to states during the federal shutdown and sequester last year.

The City Council kickstarted the repairs after finding a creative alternative — loaning money to the state — in January.

Local officials called the $1.3, interest-free loan a “strategically innovative funding solution” to detour a backlog in federal highway funds and finally get the Broadway Streetscape Project completed. It allowed the project status to tick over to “approved for construction” from “pending” status and the city will be paid back within two years, according to the contract approved by the City Council.

Federal money is paying for 80 percent of the project costs.

Business owners along Broadway have been suffering from the deplorable road conditions and many have invested in their buildings in anticipation of the streetscape project’s completion. They have also suffered years of construction leading up to the current state of affairs as crews made infrastructure improvements underground to sewer lines and other projects.

In January, Salvation Cafe owner Sue LaMond wrote a letter to the City Council on behalf of a group of Broadway business owners asking the city to get the work completed as soon as possible and so as not “[to] put our businesses at risk for a third summer. It would be devastating to the businesses who continue to invest our time and money for the privilege of doing business on what Preservation magazine calls ‘Newport’s Main Street.”

In January, city officials said that the project wouldn’t be completed for 18 months. Factoring in the deep winter when work slows down, the project might not be finished until late 2016. But public works officials said they would press to expedite the project schedule.

There is on-street parking on Spring Street and a municipal lot behind the library.

The meeting will be held in the Program Room.

You can find out more information at the city’s Broadway Streetscape project page HERE.