City to allow Sunday work on parking garage, closes sidewalk

Published 9:09 am Friday, April 19, 2019

In an effort to keep on schedule with the construction of the downtown Square parking garage, Oxford’s Board of Alderman approved requests made by Innovative Construction Management.

With the Double Decker Arts Festival taking place next weekend, ICM requested allowance to work on selected Sundays, including this Sunday, to ‘offset lost time due to Double Decker.’ With the Square being filled with vendors, a stage and several thousand people during the festival, it will be difficult for precast deliveries to arrive, and production will decrease between April 25-27 due to the amount of traffic and festival set up.

Other Sundays requested were May 5 and 12. University of Mississippi’s graduation is scheduled for May 11, but the Board approved the dates in an attempt to gain as many workdays as possible. An oversized crane used for construction needs breaking down, which further led to ICM’s request for Sunday work. The allotted space for breakdown of the crane will require trucks to occupy Jefferson Avenue for short periods of time. pending a Sunday breaking down the crane will help minimize traffic issues on Jefferson.

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ICM also requested to close the sidewalk on Jefferson Avenue located on the north side of the work site for the remainder of the construction schedule. As the project nears completion, workers and materials will occupy the sidewalk space more frequently. Trucks entering and exiting the site during pre-casting has caused damage to the sidewalk that will be repaired as part of the project’s scope of work.

During the Downtown Parking Commissions’ April meeting, a representative of ICM revealed the project is 50 percent complete and remains on target to hit the scheduled completion date of Sept. 24.