Manning Avenue stretch to close for summer

A portion of a major north-south route through Washington County will be closed for the summer for construction work.

County transportation officials will widen Manning Avenue in the Stillwater area, from two lanes to four lanes. To do that, they plan to close about a mile stretch that runs from 62nd Street N. to 75th Street N. (also known as County Road 12).

Traffic will be detoured on Lake Elmo Avenue (also known as County Road 17) and 75th Street.

The section will be closed, starting in early June. Officials are hoping to reopen it by Oct. 15.

Only residents living along the road will be able to use it during construction.

In addition, County Road 12, located west of Manning Avenue, will be closed for roughly two weeks in early June, at the beginning of the project.

An open house to discuss the project will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday at the Washington County Government Center, room 560, 14949 62nd St. N. in Stillwater.

About 17,000 cars use that stretch of Manning Avenue daily.

"What we have is about 3 inches of gravel and the cars are pounding the heck out of it," said Lux, who is also the project manager.

County officials have been talking about widening that part of Manning Avenue since about 1996, Lux said.

County officials worked with Stillwater officials to secure land for the purposes of building a road during the planning stages of two high-profile housing developments in Stillwater -- Liberty on the Lake and Legends of Stillwater.

A landscaping plan with trees and shrubs is scheduled for 2009. The plan calls for a partial grass and partial concrete median, with about 40 trees in the median.

The road borders Stillwater and Stillwater Township on the east and Grant on the west. Estimated costs are $190,000 for Stillwater and $35,000 for Grant.

Properties along the reconstruction site include Aamodt's Apple Farm and Axdahl's Garden Farm & Greenhouse. Lux said the owner of the apple farm is relocating his driveway opposite of 62nd Street. And county officials reached an agreement earlier this year with the owners of the historic Axdahl farmhouse, which sits on the corner of Manning Avenue and County Road 12. The owners will relocate the house to another spot on their property or on a neighbor's property.