MUSKEGON, MI – Traffic at Muskegon’s Pere Marquette beach will be disrupted again, starting next week, with detours for water main placement and street resurfacing.
Starting Tuesday, Sept. 8, the kiteboarding parking lot next to the roundabout will close for one to two weeks before the two-way, residential section of Beach Street shuts down for about 2 ½ months.
The work is part of a “Muskegon County Channel Crossing Project” that will install a water main under the Muskegon Channel and Muskegon State Park to transport water from the Muskegon filtration plant to customers in the northern part of Muskegon County.
Digging has already started to connect the first section of water main to a pipe “stub” across Beach Street from the filtration plant just south of the parking lot. Once the Labor Day weekend is over, the work will kick into high gear.
The result of this year’s project will be a newly paved and narrower strip of Beach Street in the residential section between the roundabout and Simpson Avenue. It also will result in a 30-inch water main pipe that will be extended next year via directional drilling under the channel and dunes of Muskegon State Park, according to public works officials from the city of Muskegon and Muskegon County.
The pipe will connect to another “stub” at Memorial Drive and Weber Road and provide a back-up water supply for the county’s Northside Water System serving Laketon, Dalton, Muskegon and Fruitland townships, including Michigan’s Adventure, said Steve Fink, public works engineer and project manager for Muskegon County.
“This has been talked about in some manner for a couple decades now,” Fink said. “We’re looking forward to having it completed. It’s going to improve the reliability of the water system greatly.”
The city decided that since the road was going to be torn up for water main placement, it would take the opportunity to resurface Beach Street with asphalt, said Leo Evans, the city of Muskegon’s public works director.
A section of Beach Street will close, and another will switch from one-way to two-way traffic for installation of a water main and street resurfacing.
Once work is completed in the kiteboarding lot later this month, northbound Beach Street traffic at Pere Marquette will be detoured along the western side of the “ovals” that normally is one-way for southbound traffic only.
Angled parking along that stretch of road that runs past the bathhouse and concession stand as well as The Deck restaurant will be on the west side of the road only. The two-way traffic detour will extend past Margaret Drake Elliott Park to Simpson Avenue, Evans said. Limited access will be provided for Beach Street residents.
The Pere Marquette work is expected to finish by Dec. 1. It will result in a T intersection at which southbound ovals traffic will have to stop for southbound traffic from the two-way section of Beach Street. Currently southbound traffic from that residential section of Beach Street yields at an angled intersection for the ovals traffic.
The work comes months after traffic disruptions at the beach for construction of the roundabout that has resolved traffic backups at Beach Street where it intersects Lakeshore Drive.
Costs of the $2 million project is being split between the city and county. Hallack Contracting from Hart is the main contractor on the project.
The second phase of the water main project will begin in Spring 2021 and will involve connecting the main to the stub at Memorial and Weber and extending the main to the Snug Harbor area of Muskegon State Park near Muskegon Lake, Fink said.
Later in 2021, likely late summer or fall, the final phase will commence with the laying of the pipe under the channel and through the state park dunes via directional drilling, Fink said. The drilling will not disrupt boat traffic on the channel and will result in the placement of the pipe about 92 feet below the water surface, he said.
That phase will connect the main placed at Pere Marquette this year with the pipe at Snug Harbor, he said.
The result will be a looped water system that will allow water to keep flowing in the event of a major break in the current 24-inch pipe that runs along the causeway between Muskegon and North Muskegon and Whitehall Road, Fink said.
Officials with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy have been pressuring the county for many years to complete the backup water service, Fink said. The pipe stubs at Pere Marquette and at Memorial and Weber were placed in the 1990s in preparation for the eventual looped system, he said.
“The whole thing has been thought out for a long time,” Fink said. “It’s finally now coming to fruition.”
The total cost to the county is estimated at about $12 million, and will be paid with cash and bonds, Fink said.
Also on MLive:
Muskegon street to be named for late Bishop Nathaniel Wells Jr.
Historic Muskegon lighthouse undergoes renovations
Should coronavirus relief funds pay for a $200K splash pad in Muskegon?
Recent Comments