Residents filled the Spring Valley Community Center on Thursday, March 27 for the Spring Valley Neighborhood Meeting to learn more about the 2025 Tracy Road Project.
“The project scope is Tracy Road from Trunk Highway 16/Broadway Avenue over to Section Avenue. The project does expend all the way through that Section Avenue and County State Aid Highway (CSAH) 1 intersection so that is going to be one of the bigger headaches for the community as a whole,” explained Drew Weber, of Bolton and Menk, who hosted the event.
The project will be extensive as it will include upgrading or replacing numerous services.
“It is pretty evident on the surface that this road needs some improvements, but there is also utility needs, sanitary sewers has some infiltration issues because a lot of it is clay, the water main is aging and this is a nice place to upsize that watermain to enhance the flows in town and there is a lack of catch basins in the area, too. So a lot of needs from top to bottom, which makes a project like this very efficient and effective from a cost standpoint,” Weber said.
The surface of the new roadway will be 36-feet-wide bituminous pavement, which will narrow the road slightly, with concrete curb and gutters, as well as five-foot-wide concrete sidewalks and driveway aprons.
The sanitary sewer improvements include eight to 12” Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) pipe, new concrete manholes and six-inch residential service to property lines.
According to Weber, replacing the clay pipes with PVC will keep unnecessary water out of the wastewater treatment plant, which will help keep operating costs down.
The watermain will be upgraded to eight to 12” watermain with one-inch residential services to property lines with curb stops. The hydrants and valves will also be replaced.
“I mentioned the lack of catch basins; there is a water drainage issue coming off the highway on that west end, so we are replacing all the storm sewer infrastructure,” Weber said of the storm sewer improvements.
The upgrades will include new 12-inch to 36-inch pipe with additional catch basins and six-inch subdrain in the street with sump pump services.
This is a joint project between Fillmore County and the city of Spring Valley.
“They were able to obtain a grant through the state of Minnesota to help with some of the costs for both the county and the city, which made this project possible and lowered the city-wide impact on taxpayers,” Weber noted.
The estimated cost of the total project is $3,319,000 with the city of Spring Valley paying $905,000, Spring Valley Public Utilities paying $611,000 and Fillmore County paying $1,803,000.
The city of Spring Valley has assessment policy that states they can assess for 20% of the improvements including the street and site, sanitary sewer and storm sewer. The watermain and services are not assessable. Those residents with corner lots will see a 50%reduction.
“If the city were to move forward with their policy as written at 20% the median assessment would be close to $15,000. That is for a few reasons, large frontages in general and a lot of corner lots so that reduction lowers the amount of assessable property which increases the per foot cost. But the goal is to be fair and comparable to previous projects, so back in 2023 the city council chose to make a slight adjustment to how the policy was applied and how those assessments are calculated to reduce the impact on property owners.”
The goal is to keep the number closer to $100 to $110 per square foot for assessments.
According to Weber, based on the bid pricing the city chose to do the same adjustment to the policy. So residents will only assessed for 20% of the city’s portion of street and site, 20 % of sanitary sewer, 10% of storm sewer. With this adjustment the per foot cost will be at $104.76 which is a median assessment of $6,500.
The construction itself is scheduled to begin in June this year with most of the project completed in October 2025. The final bituminous layer will be laid next summer to allow for settling.
“So your headache should be one season with a minor inconvenience next summer,” Weber said. “We will have someone on site every day the contractor is here. We will be available 24/7. I’m not going to lie, there are going to be some inconveniences this summer, it’s construction, so we try to make ourselves as available as possible.”
Affected residents are encouraged to go to clients.bolton-menk.com/springvalley2025streets/ to sign up for email updates so they can get up-to-date information about the construction. There is also a helpful video on the site explaining what residents can expect during the construction process and a list of contacts for the project.
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