The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Construction slated for 2017-2018
The Board of Gunnison County Commissioners (BOCC) gave a green light on Tuesday, January 13, to paving and widening the uppermost 12.4 miles of County Road 209 this side of Cottonwood Pass. When the BOCC signed the Reimbursable Agreement and Memorandum of Agreement, Gunnison County committed to pay the Federal Highway Administration a total project cost of $1,491,325 between 2016 and 2019.
“The year they do the construction is not going to be a lovely year,” Marlene Crosby, director of Gunnison County Public Works, told the commissioners. “They’re either going to be working at night and it’s open during the daytime, or vice versa.”
As of January 14, there is no official start date but construction is expected to take place during 2017 and 2018, and according to the Reimbursable Agreement signed on Tuesday, “will be completed no later than December 31, 2018.”
The agreement also states, “The construction season is assumed to be short as the area has extreme winter conditions from October thru April. The snowpack can vary from year to year, at times delaying access in the spring until late June.”
Crosby said she thought hard about how to use the project money to have a better impact elsewhere, such as making a smoother ride on Ohio Creek Road, but concluded, “I can’t think of any other projects where you could take that same amount of money and do what we’re going to do for safety.”
BOCC chairperson Paula Swenson responded light-heartedly to the idea of construction closing the pass: “The good thing is you can get into the valley by going around [on Monarch Pass and Highway 50].”
The project will widen the road to two 11-foot-wide paved lanes with one-foot-wide gravel shoulders, and will remove some of the more technical switchbacks toward the top of the pass. Earmarking county funds for the project begins with the 2015 budget.
Crosby said the total cost of the project to the county is guaranteed to not exceed the total projected cost of nearly $1.5 million, which is 5 percent of the entire $29,826,500 project cost. “I know there are good things and bad things about it but I continue to think that it’s a worthwhile project,” Crosby said.
