DeKALB – A series of delays concerning utility relocations have pushed the timeline back for replacing the North First Street and Lucinda Avenue bridges in DeKalb to October, officials said.

The city of DeKalb now anticipates that work, which resumed early last month, to the First Street bridge will be done by the end of October, while replacement of the Lucinda Avenue bridge is on pace for completion as early as the end of October. The project, which includes the two bridges and is packaged in a single contract, had gotten underway in the spring, with an original completion date set in August.

City Engineer Zac Gill did not dispute that the cost of the project could rise because of the utility delays.

“There are some potentials,” Gill said. “There could be justified expenses to the contractor, i.e. if they’ve had certain equipment that’s been sitting idle. There is a cost that we can evaluate – some of those costs are allowed by the contract, some of them are not. There’s also the idea of, is the city able to recoup that money from the party that caused the delay as the city had no hand in creating that delay? Those are discussion that can be had, too.”

“If there are some cost overruns from this, they could be absorbed and the actual impact to the taxpayer of the city of DeKalb i.e. coming out of their motor fuel tax money to be used for other things would be very much diminished.”

—  Zac Gill, DeKalb city engineer

The city, however, does not anticipate having to leave taxpayers on the hook for cost overruns should they incur from delays to the work performed on First Street and Lucinda Avenue bridges, officials said.

The city has a matching state grant valued at $5.6 million it is using to pay for the project and is well under estimated budget, according to city documents.

“If there are some cost overruns from this, they could be absorbed and the actual impact to the taxpayer of the city of DeKalb, i.e. coming out of their motor fuel tax money to be used for other things would be very much diminished,” Gill said. “Most of it would be absorbed by that major bridge fund there and again covered at a diminished rate there. At this point, we’re not looking at a massive overage.”

Gill said the project had initially started on time and was progressing well.

Things did not pan out according to plan, however.

“Into May, we started to have some conflict with utilities there,” Gill said. “We had coordinated there as early as the winter of 2021, so about 18 months in advance. We had provided those plans and asked for this relocation and other coordination. That did not come through with the collaboration that we expected or were desiring.”

Gill said it’s not clear why the city was unable to get the private utility companies involved to ensure that the project remained on schedule. Gill said setbacks involving utilities are not unusual for projects such as this.

“The gist of it is this, those are private utility companies,” Gill said. “They are not owned, they’re not operated. We have no right to touch them, to do anything to them, and that goes for the power companies, with Thomas Edison, the natural gas company, which would be Excelon or known as Nicor, as well as private fiber internet. The conflicts we had with municipal-owning utilities, the water and the sewer, we alleviated those ahead of schedule and had those out of the way. … I can’t speak to the internal decision-making or whatever struggle they had with meeting the deadlines that were communicated with [private utility companies].”

Gill said there still are several unknowns concerning the project going forward.

“They can’t move the equipment and the crews from First Street over to Lucinda until they’re done with the task on First Street,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they don’t start Lucinda until the end of October. It just means that whatever they’re doing now that is pushed back at least a similar six-week fashion that First Street was. However, there still are potential utility conflicts on Lucinda. Again, we don’t know all the extent of those until they get the crane over there and we start to dig and demolish more and really see those.”

Gill said the relocation of utilities is more a daunting task in today’s world than it may have been in years past.

“It’s not quite as precise as people think when you’re talking about utilities installed a generation ago underneath the river,” he said. “We don’t have an exact feed right where they’re at. We have a general idea and that’s why we communicated. We strongly believe there will be a conflict and ask for their collaboration.”

Gill acknowledged that the community is feeling the impact from the blow dealt by the utility delays.

“I think we suffered maybe a five-to-six week loss from that,” Gill said. “Again, that was based solely on the lack of coordination and response from the utility company, unfortunately. Again, I don’t know what all their internal reasons were. I just know that what was provided for us as response was not adequate for our goals communicated.”

Traffic in and around First Street and Lucinda Avenue will need to continue to be re-routed while work on the bridges is underway.

The city had intended for work on the bridges to be completed in time for the start of classes in the fall, which Gill said he is saddened to say won’t happen. The North First Street bridge work is close to DeKalb District 428′s Clinton Rosette Middle School. The Lucinda Avenue bridge work is adjacent to Northern Illinois University campus near the Music building.

“We’re very disappointed that we’re not making our promise as scheduled to the school district,” Gill said. “I have communicated that to the school district.”

Gill said the replacements have been going smoothly since it resumed early last month, however.

“Since that date, [that] has gone as expected,” Gill said. “They [utilities] have fully cooperated since. They were able to mobilize and get their crews and equipment they needed to fulfill that.”