The sidewalk on Pacific Avenue between 4th and 3rd Streets by Wells Fargo Bank and Homelife Furniture has been opened up to foot traffic, the fuel tanks have been removed and the Pacific Avenue undersidewalk vaults opened up for repair and reconstruction. With vault lids being set by the Rendezvous this week and the Blue Moon next, the contractor is pushing hard to get the sidewalk work next to the Tillamook Apartments and the Rendezvous poured and cured so that the folks who traffic that block can return to some semblance of normalcy.
Admittedly, the pedestrian pathways leading to the entrances along Pacific have been confusing for both residents and patrons; hopefully a clear system that everyone can pick up on intuitively will be in place by this weekend.
The sidewalk disruptions will shift to the Post Office frontage along First Street beginning the first week of April as pipework starts to get laid back past Laurel toward Madrona. There will have to be some carefully coordinated work around the delivery entrance to the rear of the Post Office as everyone knows that, regardless of which way the wind blows, ‘the mail must get through’.
In the meantime, the bridge continues apace. The steel is being delivered and the decks will be formed up over the next two weeks now that the waterline is tied together in the channels underneath. The bridge takes on more of its final shape with every passing day.
The drainage work on the north end by the Diesel Repair Shop is ready to stub out the 18” westward laterals next week, which may require some nightwork in the vicinity of Rosenberg’s to get them across the travel lanes. However, the good news is that, with SC Paving’s asphalt batch opening on the 30th, the pothole patching throughout the project should vastly improve.
In a last minute turn of events, a local partnership has cropped up that will lay the groundwork for the future undergrounding of electrical power in the Second Street plaza (soon to be renamed through a citywide contest). The Tillamook Urban Renewal Agency has joined forces with the Tillamook People’s Utility District, the Tillamook Public Works Department, and Just Bucket Excavating, Inc. to ensure the installation of sufficient conduits and vaults under the Plaza that will accommodate the future pulling of all overhead wires in that area down through those tubes in order to keep the visual clutter in this community centerpiece to a minimum.
Each partner is bringing either money, materials, or labor forward in this last effort before the plaza get constructed with hard surfacing that will prevent the ability to lay these conduits for decades to come.
Our Highway Project E-news bulletin is created by Jeannell Wyntergreen, Highway 101/6 Project Liaison for the Tillamook Area Chamber of Commerce. If you have any questions or would like to share a comment with the Chamber, contact her at hwyproject@