The city of South Bend has hit a snag that will delay its Colfax Avenue streetscape project, as plans to improve the Colfax Bridge moved forward.
If you’ve been downtown lately you may have noticed that work on the Colfax streetscape project suddenly just stopped about a month ago. Leslie Biek, the city’s transportation engineer, says the contractor has encountered underground utilities, namely vaults owned by American Electric Power, that stand in the way of sewer pipes the city needs to install. Biek says the work has again resumed but the project is now expected to finish in November, rather than mid-October as initially targeted.
Also Tuesday St. Joseph County commissioners approved a project to rehabilitate the Colfax Bridge over the St. Joseph River. While they do it, the county has agreed to incorporate changes to the bridge that the city wants to see. Those will include four monuments, two at each end of the bridge, with LED-lit fixtures that match the windows of the nearby Morris Performing Arts Center. They’ll also add guardrails, widen the bridge’s pedestrian path, and improve the intersections at both ends of the bridge.
The bridge project is slated to start late summer or early fall.
