Alley Work:

Final grading on the West alley should be completed late Friday or early Saturday. The goal is that we start pouring on Monday with the goal of the concrete being completed on Tuesday or Wednesday. From that point we'll have a 4-5 day cure time prior to allowing ANY vehicles other than All Americans on it.
The East alley is being staked in preparation for final grading to be started on Friday or Monday. The goal for the East alley would be that they could pour it mid to late next week.

Sample Banner Sign: I'll be bringing down a full scale mock up of the proposed "welcome to downtown Kalona banner signs to the Chamber Lunch on Monday for everyone to see. As well I hope to have the mock up of the bronze recognition plaques that will go with the quilt blocks.

4th Street: On Thursday Maxwell construction completed the installation of the 24" pipe South to B Avenue. Friday they will pour the floor of the new drop box with the remainder of the walls to be poured on Monday.

B Avenue: With the installation of the storm sewer in both the alleys and 4th street coming to an end we will be looking at bringing in the same Maxwell crew to tie into the B avenue storm sewer again at the corner of the General Store and complete it East to the Chamber building. This is ahead of the proposed time frame so the hope is that we can regain some of the "rain" days back where all we could do is lay storm sewer pipe.

A Place: Final grading is being completed early next week when All American is back into town. As well FSB had some work done to the West side of their entrance and it will be back filled at the same time.

Community Center: This week we've been able to get the bulk of the irrigation pulled and in place. The goal for the remainder of this week is to get the distribution box installed on the West side of the community center. Once this is in place we can complete the final pouring of the sidewalk. As well the City will be looking to start our portion of the landscaping around the community center. The plant materials and look will fall in line with what the architects / engineers are using around town as well.

Gateway Entrances / Kalona Signs: The corners of B and Hwy 1 as well as Hwy 22 & 5th have all been saw cut in anticipation of removal in the upcoming weeks. Again the two gateway entrances will incorporate all of the downtown elements (stamped / colored concrete, plant materials, walk ways). The prefabricated signage for the 4 entrance signs have been completed and we are in the process of staking the 4 "welcome" locations. The goal is that we can start working these into the schedule.

Continuing to work in the alleys:

We are hoping to get through the alleys so that we can begin pouring some concrete late this week or early next. I say this when it is pouring down rain so my guess is that we'll be off a day.

Monday: Staking of the West alley in preparation for final grade.
Tuesday - Thursday: Grading of the West alley in preparation of concrete.
Friday - Early next week: Pouring of the West alley. Once concrete is poured we'll need 3-4 days with no traffic on them before we open them up to the public.

On Monday the Downtown Committee is meeting to discuss stained and stamped concrete samples. The hope is that we can come to agreement on the samples so that we can give All American the go ahead on the gateway's into the downtown. {22&5th along with 1&B ave}.

Community Center Parking Lot / Alleys

We are progressing nicely in the West alley and should have all of the storm sewer installed by the end of the week. After it is installed the alley will be cut to grade and paving will follow.

On Tuesday we did run into an issue that needs to be resolved and will require us to tear out some extremely old storm sewer on 4th street. The area in question is between the alley and the Family Day Spa, running along the West side of the street. We'll be rearing up roughly 8' of the street and installing new storm sewer along with a new storm sewer box that had a gas line running through it (picture). What we found was not adequate for numerous reasons and it just makes sense at this time to replace.

Community Center Parking Lot: We have had the fill installed in the lot and we'll be running the street sweeper over it in a few hours. At this time we've taken down all the closure signs so people can start to utilize it for daily parking. Once the lighting gets in we'll work on closing sections down as needed.

6th Street Closure on Friday: Mid morning on Friday we'll be closing 6th street just East of the alley (near Gambles). We'll be making the last of our connections to the water service that runs North and South on 6th. This will be done "live" so we are not anticipating any service outages.

West Alley Closing

On Monday and Tuesday we'll begin the process of shutting down the west alley between 4th & 5th street. Once the alley is shut down the storm sewer will be installed and the grading and removal of surface materials will follow the sewer install.

Community center parking lot will receive back fill in the tree & landscaping areas. Once the back fill is completed we can begin to open up the parking lot for parking. Late last week we poured concrete samples for both the "colored" and "stamped" ares. The samples are located near the flag pole at the fire station as well as in front of the old library entrance.

Early this morning the final water hook up should happen at the East end of the alley at Gambles and 1st class apparel. Thanks for the patience that everyone has extended us!

Water Shut Off on Friday the 9th:

On Friday the 9th at 9:00 we'll be moving the water services from the old main to the new line. Should everything go well we should have everything moved over to the new line by 11:00.

Once the lines have been moved over we'll be going business to business in the downtown to confirm that you have water service. As you can imagine with a system this old there are multiple lines and splices that we can "assume" are connected to a specific location but until we check we are not always 100% confident.

This shut off will only affect those business with service connections in the alleys between 4th & 6th.

B Avenue Clean Up / Gravel

On Wednesday, All American will be bringing in gravel to put into the storm sewer trench. The delay as you can see is caused due to the condition of the road right now.

Maxwell Construction will be continuing to work on services in the alley's. As you can imagine we are seeing quite a bit of services within the alley way and it is causing some delays in getting services cut over.

Weekend Work

All American will be working on the parking lot on Saturday. Pouring of the walks on the South end and getting everything graded and cleaned up.

Maxwell Construction will be working in the alley's on both Saturday and Monday. They will be cutting in services.

Have a great weekend!

Community Center: There is quite a bit of work on the community center lot today. We'll be pouring the South walk way and sidewalk that will extend just past the old library entrance. As well the parking lot will be cleaned today. We brought in LL Pelling to do the asphalt overlay on the Northeast corner of the lot.

Alley's: A large portion of Wednesday and Thursday has been put into getting the Library prepared for the tie into the new line. The tie in for the library will be early Friday morning so that they will be back up and running in time for the 1:00 opening.
As well Maxwell is installing a new hydrant at the corner of the Tuscan Moon / Bakery.

Cleaning: All American will be cleaning up all work areas both today and tomorrow before leaving town for the holiday weekend.