Green Tree Road Slated to Fully Reopen Within Weeks

After weeks of following bright orange "detour" signs, residents will soon be able to utilize Green Tree Road again — and not just for east-west driving passage, but also the newly constructed pedestrian footpath.

Scott Brandmeier, director of public works, said both Green Tree Road and the new footpath are now open for resident use and will only be intermittently closed for the next few weeks as construction crews finish the shoulder and landscaping.

"There will be periodic closures starting sometime this week. We're anticipating that some of that work will start maybe on Wednesday," Brandmeier said. 

All work is scheduled to be completed within the next few weeks. He said paving was finished last Tuesday and now the road just needed time to "set." Next, crews will finish the shoulder and planting grass between the footpath and the road.

"We tossed out the idea of some plantings, bushes, things of that nature," he said. "But, for right now, we're just going to keep it grass."

Construction has taken longer than originally anticipated, Brandmeier said, due to a 20-inch, concrete-encased water main that was discovered right in the middle of Santa Monica Boulevard.

"When we got in there and were digging, then we realized there's this big thing and it's lower than what we anticipated and what a lot of people don't always understand is a foot may not seem like a lot, but it effects everything else we do," he said. "Fortunately, it didn't effect the water main, but it effected the storm sewer."

In this case, Brandmeier said one change impacted another, and then another. When they found the water main, they had to lower the storm sewer pipes and man holes.

"We had to start from the most downstream location over by the railroad tracks and work back," he said. But that wasn't all. Crews then found a sanitary sewer lateral for North Shore Bank which had to be relocated around the man hole to tie into the sanity sewer system.

"In the grand scheme of things, our change order for the contractor is somewhere around $35 to $40,000," he said. "But on a $900,000 plus project, that's very reasonable. Not a lot of extra costs were incurred."