LAKE PLACID — Lake Placid residents can say goodbye to detours, one-way traffic and excavators on Main Street — construction on the village’s main drag is 99% done.

“Ninety-nine percent or more,” Lake Placid Department of Public Works Superintendent Brad Hathaway said Friday.

The Main Street construction project is wrapping up this month, both ahead of schedule and more than $3 million over budget.

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Ahead of schedule

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The project, which started in April 2021 and was originally expected to be complete by next fall, is done an entire construction season early, Hathaway said. Nice weather in the spring and fall extended construction seasons over the past two years, according to Hathaway. Construction workers also did a “substantial amount” of work during summer seasons when construction was supposed to be on pause, he added — they took care of some work in parking lots and parks, even while detours were lifted, since they felt the work wasn’t too disruptive. Hathaway said those extra days of work weren’t factored into the project’s original schedule.

Hathaway said that the village will likely issue a notice of “substantial completion” to Kubricky Construction — which worked on the project from start to finish — this month. He said the company would likely come through Main Street again in the spring to take care of some “punch list” items and cosmetic fixes while the project is still under warranty.

“And then it’ll be over with,” Hathaway said.

The Main Street overhaul included green infrastructure upgrades — including permeable sidewalks, new bump-outs with permeable bricks and a new stormwater system to filter stormwater before it runs into Mirror Lake — along with new water pipes, granite sidewalks, new asphalt on Main Street and some surrounding side streets, and a complete redesign of Brewster Park with new green spaces.

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Above budget

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The project also exceeded its original budget of more than $10 million as bid by Kubricky Construction. The project has cost more than $13.6 million up to this point, according to village Treasurer Mindy Goddeau, but she said she won’t have the final project cost until the rest of the project wraps up next spring.

Goddeau said there were six change orders for the project — meaning there was some unanticipated work, and therefore unexpected costs, that had to be added to the project — which tacked on another $2.7 million to the total price of the overhaul.

The construction project got more than $3.6 million in state funding from the Environmental Facilities Corporation, according to Goddeau, and the state Department of Transportation provided $2.97 million for road work since Main Street is technically a state road. To help pay for the rest of the project, the village took out a more than $4.4 million loan that the village will have to pay back over 30 years. Together, those funds cover about $11 million of the project’s total costs. When asked how the rest of the project is being paid for, Goddeau didn’t immediately respond by press time Friday.

Hathaway said Kubricky didn’t run into any major problems with pandemic-related supply chain bottlenecks and inflation. He said Kubricky had ordered most materials for Main Street before the supply chain got too backed up, and Goddeau said the company brought in parts they didn’t need from other jobs when there were gaps in material availability. Goddeau said that the project’s material costs were solidified in the village’s contract with Kubricky, so the company couldn’t charge the village extra for any increased costs for already-contracted materials.

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Reflections

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Monday, April 5, 2021 was an eventful day for Art Devlin — it was his first day as Lake Placid’s mayor and the official first day of the Main Street construction project. But Devlin said it’s been easy to move through the first half of his term alongside the project’s progression. Before he was mayor, he was a village trustee for 12 years.

“I just had to connect dots and keep things going,” Devlin said.

He said the project was done at the perfect time — before any pandemic-related jumps in construction material costs started hitting the supply chain. And while Kubricky was the main contractor for the work, Devlin said that village employees did a lot of work to maintain operations that supported the project.

“Everybody’s involved, everyone’s working long hours, but everyone just did what they had to do and no one complained or grumbled and it all got done,” Devlin said.

Hathaway wished that the village had anticipated some “little things” in the project that he said locals got upset about — like the sharpness of the new granite curbs, which he said have popped a lot of tires — but he thought people’s overall opinion about the project was positive.

“Change is hard for people,” Hathaway said. “I think once everybody gets used to the new Lake Placid, I think they’ll love it. I mean, most people we hear from now — tourists and people around here — are proud of what was accomplished.”

While a Main Street task force was created to provide input during the planning process, project planning and construction on Main Street moved forward without broader public input. There were concerns among some in the community back in 2020 that the project design reduced the number of parking spots available on Main Street. And now that the project is mostly complete, Hathaway said he’s heard some new complaints, like those about the sharp curbs.

The village has tried to address these negatives, according to Hathaway — he said Kubricky went around last week and buffed the edges of the curbs to make them duller, and the village added some parking spots to the upper NBT lot with the construction project. While Hathaway said Main Street did lose some street parking spots — the street was originally slated to lose three spaces — he wasn’t sure if the overall number of spots around Main Street had increased or decreased with the project.