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08/21/2023 02:21 PMMADISON
The Town of Madison has announced that construction work related to the removal of the overhead wires and utility poles for selected properties on the south side of Boston Post Road in downtown has begun and is expected to be completed this week.
According to town officials, the removal of the utility poles is a critical phase of the Madison Center Project (MCP) that officials describe as “a decades-long community improvement project designed to enhance the streetscape of Madison’s downtown central business district.”
“After decades of delays, I am excited to say we are finally in the process of removing the utility poles from Madison’s beautiful downtown center. And I am especially grateful we are able to get this accomplished with minimal disruptions to our local businesses and main street visitors,” said Madison First Selectwoman Peggy Lyons. “When I entered office four years ago, there were three outstanding easements that prohibited the completion of the utility work, and no funding was budgeted to finish the project. Now, after working cooperatively with local property owners, Eversource, town boards, and our Public Works Department, we have been able to get this project closer than ever to the finish line. I want to thank the many current and former elected officials, Planning Committee volunteers, town staff, Eversource personnel, and property owners for their vision and commitment to completion of this project.”
Lyons said there are still several additional phases of the project that need to be completed. The first of those is the removal of poles from the north side of the street—an effort that Lyons said has been delayed due to the unavailability of specialized equipment that Eversource has mandated the town to provide in order to complete the work.
“The hang-up on the north side is that there is certain equipment that Eversource specifies us to have installed on the buildings that are going to receive this new underground service. Unfortunately, these specific items have major backlogs,” Lyons said. “I was told that it could be six to 12 months to get the equipment, and that was several months ago.”
The items are called “dual gang meter sockets,” according to Lyons, who said that she’s been in contact with Eversource officials in the hope that the process can be expedited in some way.
Lyons also said that negotiations with property owners to agree to certain aspects of the projects design—namely large transformer boxes and acquiring the associated property easement permissions—was a complex and protracted process that took her administration several years to finalize.
“We are working with [Eversource] to see if we can come up with some alternate configurations. It’s been a bit of a struggle with them. But we are hopeful there is some alternative way to this address this,” Lyons said. “This type of thing has been going on the last couple of years now, since the pandemic, particularly with electrical equipment. There are a lot of bottlenecks and delays and supply chain problems. Unfortunately, what they are requiring us to install has a shortage, and we just can’t get them. It has been very frustrating, obviously, from my standpoint, because there are some options that are perfectly acceptable and that Eversource have allowed to be installed in the past but, for some reason, they are just being sticklers on this right now.”
“It will happen on the north side. It’s not a question of if this will get done. It will. It’s just an issue of whether we are going to have to wait around for six months until these specific pieces of equipment will come through,” she continued. “I’m working on it. If they did allow different equipment, we could probably get this done in a matter of weeks. I’m working every angle I can to get them to reconsider. Eversource has been good in the last year in moving the project along, so I certainly give credit to them…but I still don’t know why we can’t have the same pragmatic approach for the rest of the project.”
Despite the delays, Lyons expressed confidence that the project will soon be completed.
“It’ll get done. We have the money, we have the contractors ready to go, we have the design plans, and all the approvals. It’s just an issue of getting these parts,” Lyons said. “I am actively in discussions with them now.”
Mitch Gross, the head of Eversource Connecticut media relations, said the company is committed to working closely with the town to finalize the north side phase of the removals and hookups.
“The Main Street project is moving forward...The south side portion of it is about 99% complete as the poles have been removed and the underground lines are in place,” Gross said. “There is some electrical equipment that must be installed on the north side to complete that portion and, as soon as it is delivered, we will work with town officials to complete that section as quickly and safely as possible.”
Another phase of the project will be the extension of the median separating the lanes of traffic on Route 1. The median now stops at the Madison Hose Company about 75 yards short of the intersection with Route 79. According to Lyons, previous administrations were unable to secure funding to complete the entire stretch of the project, and it has been in limbo for some time.
“There is a long history of this project. We are proceeding on this phase right now. We have a grant for it, and we’ve made a lot of progress on it, but there was a lot of complicated work,” Lyons said. “I give accolades to our Deputy Director of Public Works Rob Russo, who has really been working hard on this with the design plans and everything that goes with that.”
According to the current design, the entire median will eventually reach from Wall Street to Route 79 with only a gap in front of the firehouse that is required for safety and the ability of trucks and equipment to access both directions of Boston Post Road.
“We really want to complete this phase as soon as we can. There will be more pavers and streetscape to the design so that visually it will be all connected,” Lyons said. “The whole intersection at CVS will have to be rethought through. There are still some aspects of the design that will require work...but we were fortunate to receive two grants that will assist us in completing this phase of the project. We just really want downtown to be walkable and safe.”
According to Lyons, the beautification project has crucial implications for the town.
“It’s a huge improvement in beautifying our downtown. People just love our downtown. People come from all over just to visit it. It’s an attraction, and I think this creates a great communal area,” said Lyons. “Having the pole removals and removal of the unsightly wires is critical to the image of Madison. I am excited that we’ve gotten this part of the project done and the rest is going to happen. In the next couple of weeks or the next couple of months...it’s going to happen.”