William S. Canning Boulevard work to officially begin October 21st

The project has seen its difficulties, but a start date on the William S. Canning Boulevard road and sidewalk improvements has official been announced.

According to City Engineer JR Frey, the work is set to begin on October 21st. The project will begin with utility work. Frey states the City is still working to obtain approval from MassDOT District 5 for the proposed intersection design. Realignment of the intersection at Mariano Bishop will take place fairly early on so that they can use some of the area for construction staging and laydown according to Frey. The City was working on a contract with K.R. Rezendes Inc. in September. K.R. Rezendes was the low bidder in the bidding process and has recently worked on several projects in Fall River, including the Middle Street Drainage project and the Cress Brook drainage project.

Gordon R. Archibald Inc., who was the engineer for the Plymouth Ave. improvement project, was tapped to handle transportation-related improvements in 2018 and Brown and Caldwell was scheduled to handle drainage improvements.

In October of 2017, Mayor Jasiel Correia II, State Representative Alan Silvia, and Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development Secretary Jay Ash announced that the city had been awarded a $2.5 million MassWorks Infrastructure Program grant to be used on the project. The road project will start from the current main entrance of the SouthCoast Marketplace, north to Tucker Street, near Rhode Island Avenue and will include the reconstruction of William S. Canning Boulevard, and replacement of approximately 70 percent of the sidewalks. Work on the traffic lights has already been completed.

The project was initially expected to start on November 1st, 2017 with a completion date of June 30, 2018. However, studies and issues arose that delayed the project.