The short stretch of dirt where Thornwood Drive pavement should be – between the new roundabout at Faye Drive and the railroad tracks to the south – has been sitting idle for weeks.
If you travel that route between Newark or Granville and Heath, you might be wondering why it’s taking so long for construction crews to finish that few hundred feet of roadway.
“The short answer is that we’ve had some delays and we’re working to get at least one lane open – southbound – for the winter,” Newark City Engineer Brian Morehead said this week.
The longer answer is that completion of the $5.5 million project to improve that portion of Thornwood Drive is being held up by a petroleum pipeline that runs under the roadway.
Morehead said the city is obligated to notify utilities when it is planning road construction so that the utilities can make any repairs or improvements to their pipes or wires while the road is torn up. Doing so allows the city and utilities to do the work all at once and avoid the potential that a utility will come along six months after new curbs, gutters and asphalt have been installed to tear it up for repairs, he said.
“A major portion of work like this is coordinating with utilities – cable, electric, gas, oil,” he said. “Two years ago we started to coordinate with them and construction began this spring.”
There are actually two petroleum pipelines running about 6 to 8 feet beneath that section of Thornwood Drive. One of them belongs to Marathon, which has done the work it wanted to do to its pipeline.
The other is owned by Enterprise Products, based in Houston, Texas, which has indicated it wants to do some work to its pipeline but hasn’t done it yet, Morehead said.
“We are trying to motivate them to get in here and get their line taken care of, but we don’t know that it will be this year,” Morehead said.
In addition to the roadway, the city needs to install storm sewers after the pipeline company fixes its line and before the road is paved.
Meanwhile, the city engineer’s office is preparing for two more significant projects that will affect travel in Newark – one more on Thornwood Drive and the other along Mt. Vernon Road (Rt. 13) north of downtown Newark.
Major work on Mt. Vernon Road in 2027
The Mt. Vernon Road project is expected to begin in January or February and will cause rolling closures of that street for up to a year as the city continues its years-long effort to separate storm and sanitary sewers, according to Brandon Fox, Newark water administrator.
The two sewers are currently combined in some of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, which was common a century or more ago, but such sewers and the sewage treatment plant can be overwhelmed during heavy rains.
Separating the two allows for more efficient treatment of sewage and avoids contamination of stormwater flowing into area waterways. But removing the old sewers and installing two new lines – as has been done in downtown and on the south side of Newark – requires tearing up the streets they’re under.
The south side project is wrapping up now and Fox said the city expects to repave streets the week of Nov. 16. He said that the north side neighborhoods affected by the project in the coming months will eventually see new curbs, crosswalks and, in many cases, new sidewalks.
The first phase of the north side project will work from south to north on Mt. Vernon Road, from St. Clair Street to Quentin Road and includes portions of side streets along that path. It will cost $40 million and must be done by July 2028. Phase two, which will cost another $40 million, will start in 2028 and must be done by 2031. That project will be on Hudson Avenue from St. Clair Street to Stevens Street and will also include portions of side streets.
“The result is that we will have completely separated sanitary and storm sewers and all new water lines in the project area, as well as new asphalt and curbs everywhere, and some new sidewalks,” Fox said. “It’s a neighborhood revitalization project, very similar to what people have seen on 4th street and 2nd streets in the downtown area.”
Tackling the Thornwood Drive hill
The next phase of widening and rebuilding Thornwood Drive will be on the hilly stretch between the relatively new roundabout at River Road on the north and the new roundabout at Faye Drive near the railroad tracks on the south.
The project will widen the roadway to three lanes and add a roundabout at the intersection of Thornwood Drive and W. Main Street on the east side of Thornwood and James Road on the west side, Morehead said.
“Preliminary engineering is being done now to improve Thornwood from W. Main to River Road with a new alignment, probably to the east, which is lower on the hill,” Morehead said, adding that construction is targeted for 2029. “Over the next couple of years, we will be in the design and right-of-way acquisition phase.”
Widening the roadway to three lanes will allow for a turn lane, he said.
Morehead said Newark officials have been working with the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) for at least 15 years on the Thornwood Drive corridor, which they see as a natural north-south connector between Rt. 16 at Thornwood Crossing in Granville to I-70 near Hebron via Rt. 79.
“We’ve always targeted Thornwood as one that would become almost a bypass from Rt. 16 to 79 so you don’t have to go through all of the traffic lights in Heath,” Morehead said. “We’re continuing on with that goal. This has always been a high priority to get this corridor completed in Newark and Heath and down to 79.”
| Read more: Licking County residents swarm ODOT open house for details of possible connector between I-70 and Rt. 161/37/16
ODOT is in the process of designating a north-south connector to allow quick access to I-70 from the New Albany International Business Park along the Rt. 161/37/16 corridor.
Morehead said it would be helpful if there were more than one such route, given the volume of traffic on Thornwood Drive already.
“If they send all of that traffic to us, we’ll be swamped,” he said.
Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.