Second phase of South Locust Street construction begins in Grand Island

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (KSNB) - The second phase of a major construction project in Grand Island is set to begin Wednesday and last through the summer.

The South Locust Street construction project will happen from Oklahoma Avenue to Charles Street for the next several months. The street will be closed while construction is underway. During the project, crews will add new guttering and curbing along the street and will dig under the road to replace 100-year-old pipes and the water main.

The project includes new construction from Fonner Park Road to Koenig Street and will involve replacing the existing asphalt street with a concrete curb and gutter roadway section along with sidewalks and a bike trail, storm sewer, water main, sanitary sewer repairs, roadway lighting and associated pavement markings and signage.

The biggest part of this phase of the project is the addition of a roundabout, which will be constructed at the intersection of South Locust Street, Anna Street and Bismark Road.

Public Works Senior Project Engineer Tim Golka said this phase of construction, while not covering as much ground, is going to present more challenges than the first one.

“When you’re digging, you never quite know what you’re going to find. So we do have a lot of stuff that’s going to be going on underground. So people probably won’t see a lot of progress on the surface, but there’s going to be a lot of work going on underground,” Golka said. “When you do a corridor like this, you want to tear it up once. And so unfortunately, we want to get to everything we can.”

Golka said replacing the old water main presents a lot of challenges for workers.

“The challenges are as to getting, keeping that old main in service, getting the new one constructed, getting the new services built and reconnected back to the adjacent property owners,” Golka said. “That in itself and how you stage that along with all the other construction and maintaining access to people and having these open holes all over the place becomes a real challenge.”

Golka said adding the roundabout became an option later in the planning process.

“That one-car lot on the southwest corner of South Locust and Anna really became a problem spot for us and the owners of that were willing to sell to us,” Golka said. “Once that sale went through, we had some more space to look at, so we went back and evaluated a roundabout option and it fit really well.”

Golka said this project is one of many that South Locust Street has seen in the past few decades.

“We’ve been essentially working on South Locust since the ’80s tornadoes. The project down south began right after that and then in the 90s, we got the interchange built on the interstate,” Golka said. “We’ve been building all the way into town for the past 40 years and this is kind of the last phase to getting downtown.”

The project will also move the sidewalks away from the street for pedestrian safety. The work should be finished by Sept. 1.

On February 11, 2025, the Grand Island City Council awarded the South Locust Street construction contract to Elsbury Construction LLC of Grand Island, Nebraska for $9,044,222.01.

For more information on roadway and other Public Works projects, you can go to the City of Grand Island website.

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