After months of construction, State Street in downtown Howell re-opened to traffic Friday afternoon.

A ribbon cutting was held from 10am to noon, with State Street re-opening shortly after. It was well-attended by various city leaders, local lawmakers and staff, along with representatives from the Department of Housing and Urban Development or HUD and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, as the City received state grant funding for the majority of the project. 90% of the cost was funded through a Community Development Block Grant. State Street was reconstructed as a festival street that is completely barrier free, along with both alleys in the vicinity. Water mains and sewer lines were also replaced, along with storm sewer.

Interim City Manager Erv Suida tells WHMI it was a really nice celebration with a lot of people from the community, as well as business owners that were impacted by the construction. Suida says it was a relatively fast project, especially with the amount of work and construction that went on. However he says even two or three months can seem like a long, long time – especially when operating a business and dealing with customers, noise, dust and everything else. Suida said the business owners were great to work with, noting they often determine the success of a project and were all excellent to work with, and very accommodating and understanding. He says the contractor - TLS Construction – was on time, under budget and performed really well on a very complex project.

The project is about 95% complete at this point and there are said to be a few remaining items but nothing that will impact traffic or foot traffic for local businesses. Suida says the project is substantially complete and the road was opened so that it can start getting used for parking and traffic but Suida says they still have little work to do. On the electrical side, he says they’re still doing some transfers for the electrical service from overhead to underground but it’s all things that can happen with traffic. Since it is being done a little bit early, Suida says they’ll be able to kick off use of State Street this Saturday with the Legend of Sleepy Howell – adding they’re excited and looking forward to seeing how it all works out. Ribbon cutting photo credit - Richard Lim. (JM)