It was a great week for Kankakee County, with the awarding of five grants totaling $7.975 million in Highway Safety Improvement Program funding from the Illinois Department of Transportation.

The biggest project of the five is the total reconstruction of Guertin Street in St. Anne for $3 million, while two other projects – County Highway 8 (St. George Road) from Route 50 to Route 1 for $2.22 million, and County Highway 53 (7000S Road) from South 8500E Road to the Indiana state line east of St. Anne for $2.2 million – also are included in the total.

“It’s like Christmas here at Kankakee County. We got a lot of grants lately,” County Engineer Greg Heiden said Thursday at the Highways, Waterways and Buildings Committee meeting.

Two smaller projects also were approved by IDOT: the County Highway 14 (Vincennes Trail) bridge over Trim Creek for $320,000 and the County Highway 13 (1100E Road) bridge over Pike Creek for $250,000. Those amounts cover the 20% match after the $80 funding that the county received from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

“IDOT stepped up with these two grants,” Heiden said. “... In essence, it’s a free bridge [for each], as long as we don’t build expensive bridges and go over that amount.”

County Board Chairman Matt Alexander-Hildebrand thanked Illinois Secretary of Transportation Gia Biagi, who he met with recently to discuss the projects.

“She’s been fantastic ever since she started,” he said. “She’s very energized to get these road projects done. Thank you for Greg [Heiden]’s hard work submitting as well. So, we’re happy to get all this money. This is just a great day.”

More about the projects

The Guertin Street project runs for Route 1-17 east for about ¼ mile. In the past few years, the street had been under construction for water main work and was torn up for a while. The street now will undergo a complete reconstruction, and not just grinding and resurfacing. The county did some resurfacing with stone and asphalt the past year to smooth out the road.

Heiden said the engineering still needs to be done on the street project.

“We kind of know what we want to do on Guertin,” he said. “How much survey and help do we need? We need a surveyor to probably go out there and shoot the whole area and do cross sections. But beyond that, we know what we want to do – replace the base, new pavement, new curbs.”

The engineer likely will be done sometime next year, and construction could start in late 2026, but it likely will start in 2027.

“It depends on what IDOT tells us,” Heiden said. “Do we have to go through certain hoops to get designers? … Do we have to get approvals, environmental approvals? We’re at their mercy for whoever is approving that.”

Once the contractor starts turning the dirt, he said, the project could be done in a couple of months, especially if the whole street is closed during construction. That decision will be made in consultation with the village.

The St. George Road project will be about 9.5 miles in length with asphalt shoulders, rumble strips and new pavement markings. At 10.5 miles, 7000S Road will get the same treatment. The grants will cover almost the total project amount.

“Those are going to be two freebies for us, and that’s a good thing for the county,” Heiden said.

The engineering for the two bridges already has been completed, so that work should begin next year.