For years, business owners and residents in San Marco have had to endure the inconvenience of roads, sidewalks and yards flooding after a steady rain.
A $42.5 million drainage improvement project addressing those problems is set to begin in April and involves several weeks of construction that will close streets and bring detours to the area.
It includes at a full road closure in May of the intersection of San Marco Boulevard and LaSalle Street.
Jacksonville-based construction services company Haskell contracted with the city for the project engineered to move water off the land and back into the St. Johns River.
The first phase was the construction of a pump station on LaSalle Street. Pumps have been built under the water table to move water.
The second phase will be underway in mid-April and result in a partial road closure on San Marco Boulevard.
Five thousand feet of large pipes will be brought into the neighborhood so they can be attached underground to the pump station and lead to the river.
The most disruptive part of the project will begin in early May when a full road closure begins at the intersection of LaSalle Street and San Marco Boulevard.
Crews will demolish the road, some sidewalks and remove trees to bury pipes.
Haskell expects the project to be completed in mid-June.
“Once the intersection is closed, we won’t have nightly reopenings. So once the intersection is closed, it will be closed for the duration of the closure,” said Joe Kantor, director of project development at Haskell.
“There’s no real good way for us to get to a spot where we can backfill and compact that area and make it safe for traffic every day to allow for a reopening.”
The work will be contained to the city right-of-way. Trees that need to be removed will be replaced with more mature trees than normal to help replicate the neighborhood’s aesthetics, he said.
When LaSalle and San Marco are closed, there will be two detour options.
Residents, shoppers and diners will have access to homes and businesses along San Marco Boulevard and LaSalle Street, Kantor said.
However, through traffic that usually uses San Marco Boulevard to head north toward the business district will have to take a detour traveling east on Rivera Street, north on Larue Avenue and west on Cedar Street to then join rejoin San Marco Boulevard.
Southbound traffic will head from San Marco to west on LaSalle, south on River Road and then east on Riviera Street to return to San Marco Boulevard.
These detours are one-way.
To avoid the business district altogether, southbound traffic on San Marco Boulevard would drive east on Landon Avenue, north on Hendricks Avenue and west on Nira Street to rejoin San Marco Boulevard. This will be two-way traffic.
Besides addressing flooding in the business district, Kantor said it should ease stress on the outlet near Children’s Way. Working together, the new pump station should reduce some of the stress at the northern end of San Marco Boulevard.
District 5 City Council member Joe Carlucci has scheduled a community meeting on the project at 6 p.m. March 27 at the Balis Community Center at 1513 LaSalle St.
