Crews dig up a portion of Box Springs Boulevard, near the Costco location, on Tuesday as they prepare to install new utility connections to a vacant parcel of land on the north side of the road.--NEWS PHOTO COLLIN GALLANT
Road work on Box Springs Boulevard this week is unrelated to ongoing complaints about the state of the roadway in the west-end development, the News has learned, but involves a new utility service connection in the commercial zone.
A spokesman for the Box Springs Business Park conformed to the News that work in front of the Costco location on the main route through the development is excavation to set up service connection to vacant parcels on the north side of the road.
But, spokesman John Hashem declined to comment on the potential for new development activity in the area that may be the need behind the utility work.
Road conditions in the park have become an annual discussion point each spring, with motorists often querying the city about repairs that are stuck in a sort of Catch-22 for the last decade.
The roadway is still property of the developer until the top lift of asphalt is applied and a completion certificate is issued to transfer it to the responsibility of the city’s municipal works department.
In this case however, the top lift won’t be applied until all the service connections are completed and since the land mass is so large, there’s no initial plan about where the connections should go as parcels are redrawn and sold off.
In terms of construction activity in the highway commercial zone, the Copper Coulee Casino has announced plans to move operations to land in the park in 2025.
Currently, work on a new Federal Express depot, located on Box Springs Street near the Aurora Cannabis facility is continuing after it was begun last fall by an Alabama-based development company.
