$800,000 Construction at Roper Park

February 25, 2015 7:42 pm

posted by: Laurann Robinson

An $800,000 construction project at Roper Park is now underway. A portion of the park will be closed as work begins this week to stabilize sections of the eroding banks along Lynn Creek. Bridges that many park–goers use will also get a much needed face–lift as the abutments, the area where the actual bridge meets the ground, gets repaired as well.

Ben Higgins, a senior engineer with Public Works is over–seeing the project. “The creek is destabilizing right now, so it’s down–cutting, and a lot of banks sloughing off there. So what they’ll be doing is stabilizing the channel where it needs to be stabilized. And there’s also bridge abutments that are failing out there on three of four of the bridges, so they’re going to replace the abutments.”

The $800,000 project will be separated into two phases. Phase one is expected to be finished mid summer. Phase 2 will start in the fall of 2016 and should last until that following spring.

Higgins said, “we feel it’s important. If you keep on letting it go, more and more trees will fall down in the banks. It gets more unsafe for people to be near that, because there’s active bank sloughing there. And the more and more sediment you get in the streams, that’s kind of a pollutant and causes more and more problems for the natural environment.”