Akron.com

Cleveland-Massillon Road project on pace



Construction set to begin July 1

The South Cleveland-Massillon Road project will widen the road from Interstate 77 to Elgin Drive heading north to four lanes. Then from Elgin to state Route 18, it will be a five-lane road. Once the project is completed, motorists will no longer be able to turn left from the Interstate 77 northbound exit ramp. To travel southbound on South Cleveland-Massillon Road, motorists will turn right at the exit ramp and circulate through the roundabout. Graphic courtesy of the City of Fairlawn

FAIRLAWN — Construction on Fairlawn’s approximately $12 million South Cleveland-Massillon Road project will soon begin and Ernie Staten, the city’s deputy service director, said the plans involve more than just widening the road.
“The project will widen Cleveland-Massillon Road from [Interstate 77] to Elgin [Drive] heading north to four lanes. Then from Elgin to [state] Route 18, it will be a five-lane road. The five lanes will be two through lanes on each side and a center turn lane,” he said. “Along with that part of the project, there will be a roundabout at the Rothrock [Road] intersection in place of the two traffic signals that exist there now. There will also be a 10-foot-wide walking trail from the roundabout to roughly Giant Eagle, just south of Route 18. That trail will be multi-use, whether it’s for bicycles, walking, jogging or dog walking. That’s on the east side of Cleveland-Massillon Road. And on the west side of the road, there will be a sidewalk for the length of the new project.”
According to city officials, once the project is completed, motorists will no longer be able to turn left from the I-77 north exit ramp. To travel southbound on South Cleveland-Massillon Road, motorists will turn right at the exit ramp and circulate through the roundabout.
Staten said a project of this sort has long been needed.
“For about 25 years, this section of Cleveland-Massillon Road has been the most congested section of road in the AMATS [Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study] territory,” he said. “So, it’s always been on the radar that something needed to happen, and this just became the right time to look at widening the road. It’s been a five-year process, which has included two different public meetings that had pretty good turnouts. The plans took 18 months to put together. And the process of getting federal funding is very difficult. It moves very slow and there’s a lot of engineering that has to go behind it. We also had to acquire right-of-way to widen the road, which was a lengthy process with a lot of negotiation.”
Construction on the South Cleveland-Massillon Road project is estimated at $8.1 million, with another $3.9 million going to engineering, construction management and right-of-way acquisition, said Staten, who noted Fairlawn is receiving three different “styles of funding.”
“The city’s total cost for the project is $1.7 million,” he said. “For the rest, we received safety funding, which was a $5 million safety fund, which is the most you can get in the State of Ohio. Then we received over $4 million in CMAQ [Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement] funding, which went to the idea of the roundabout and the walking trail. And we also received general road funding from ODOT [Ohio Department of Transportation] to help with the project.”
According to Staten, the roundabout was an important part of the project.
“We were trying to handle multiple issues,” he said. “We have two traffic lights there that are extremely close to one another, and we needed to eliminate that situation. The second issue was that this was ODOT’s preferred issue of funding. When we put this project together, the intent was to get funding from the State of Ohio and the federal government, and ODOT wanted a roundabout in this location. So, it just became the preferred method all the way around.”
The city went out for bids on the project earlier this week.
“That will be a 30-day process,” he stated. “Then we will open bids, select a contractor and go to Council for three readings. At that point, we should make the deadline of July 1 for having a contractor retained by the city. Contractors have to be prequalified by ODOT to even bid on any part of the project.”
Construction, Staten noted, is slated to begin July 1 and run through Oct. 1, 2021.
“It will involve the complete removal of the existing roadway, and there will be a new signal system, the walking path and the new sidewalk,” he said. “We’re putting curb and gutter in, so there will be brand new storm sewers. The existing roadway has ditches on either side, and those ditches will no longer exist.”
Traffic will be affected during the length of the project, Staten said.
“For the most part, traffic is going to be maintained, but it will be very slow,” he said. “We have engineered a very extensive detour to maintain traffic.”
For those who want to keep up to date on the project’s status, Staten said the city maintains a Cleveland-Massillon Road “diary” at www.fairlawn.us.
“At the moment, we are updating our web page weekly to make sure everyone gets the most current information on exactly what’s going on with the road,” he said. “Once the project begins, I would anticipate those updates will go up more than once a week.”