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Orleans City Council Awards Bid On 1st Phase Of 140th Street Project

February 11, 2025 Steve Schwaller

(Orleans)– The Orleans City Council Monday evening awarded a bid for the first phase of a project to reconstruct 140th Street along the south side of Big Spirit Lake. Mayor Bill Maas says the low bid from Beck Excavating of Spirit Lake came in well below the engineer’s estimated cost of a little more than $4 million. He says this phase will begin at the intersection with Peoria Avenue near St. Margaret’s Cemetery, going east to the intersection at Hill Avenue…

“It’s a project that we did earlier, much earlier, and it was not a quality project. It was not one of our locals that did that work and stuff, and we’ve been wanting to replace that and we’ve finally been able to do that, to get that completed.”

Maas says the project is tentatively scheduled to start in early May with completion planned for the fall. He says it includes installation of new full-depth pavement…

“There will be no infrastructure involved in it. In other words, we won’t be, at least at the present time, replacing any water mains, we won’t be replacing any sanitary sewer. The only problem we’ve got along that whole right of way there is that it’s almost like a spider web with different communications cables and electrical cables. Anything you can think of is down there in that particular street.”

Maas says they’ll be doing their best to minimize impacts on motorists and residents while the work is going on…

“We know that the locals have adapted to things before. We’re going to try to do this in phases so it inconveniences as little people as possible.”

Plans call for the improvements to eventually extend further east, to the intersection with 253rd Avenue and north to just south of the Orleans City Hall. A firm timeline for the additional phases hasn’t been put into place yet.

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