Houghton Lakeshore Drive parking deck removal begins in early June

HOUGHTON, Mich. (WLUC) - Work is set to begin for the removal of the downtown Houghton parking deck over Lakeshore Drive.

Houghton City Manager Eric Waara says traffic control will take place the Tuesday after Memorial Day.

“You won’t be able to drive through anymore after that date,” said Waara. “The traffic control will go in, and then, right now the schedule has it on the fifth of June, Veit will be here and then start on the actual demolition of the deck.”

The majority of demolition work is being subcontracted to Veit, a Minnesota-based specialty contractor. MJO Contracting will be the general contractor for the project.

In April, Waara said that the lowest bid for the project was from MJO at just over $3 million, exceeding the city’s $2.5 million budget.

To compensate, the city downsized some of the placemaking features planned for the area.

“Then we also kind of scoured our various fund balances within the different city funds,” continued Waara. “Parking, streets, water [and] sewer to use some of those dollars to offset the water work, the street work, and the sewer work that was going on, which then allowed us to close that gap between the ask bid price and the amount of money we had available.”

Pre-project preparations are underway, such as the removal of electric wires on Tuesday.

Waara says the plan is for the east side of the deck to take four weeks to remove. The west side of the deck will then be removed in July. As the deck is removed, MJO will begin work on placemaking.

“They’re going to start grading and pouring sidewalk and installing all of those elements,” added Waara. “And they’ll keep working behind the contractor.”

Waara says that the entire project should be wrapped up by October.

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