Longmeadow, Welburn will be closed two days each beginning
Monday morning
Gilroy – Parents carting their kids to the first day of school will face earlier-than-expected road closures off Santa Teresa Boulevard, as construction crews move up the paving schedule for the east side of the city’s western artery.
The work involves laying asphalt along a roughly one-mile stretch of Santa Teresa, between Sunrise Drive and First Street.
“We’re looking at five days of paving starting at the north and working south,” said Steve Beams, a city traffic engineer and inspector. “The unfortunate part of the whole thing is that schools are starting up Monday.”
The work will require closing Longmeadow Drive, between Santa Teresa Boulevard and Hirasaki Avenue, Monday and Tuesday. Officials are encouraging drivers to access Santa Teresa from Mantelli Drive, via Hirasaki Avenue.
Later that week – Wednesday and Thursday – construction crews will close down Welburn Avenue between Santa Teresa and Gaunt Avenue. Traffic should access Santa Teresa from First Street or Mantelli Drive, via Kern Avenue.
Beams explained that the closures, originally scheduled for the fall, were moved up to save the city money.
“We weren’t going to pave until October, but obviously oil prices are going through the roof, and one of the major components of asphalt is oil,” he explained. “Materials are really starting to get scarce as prices go higher and higher each month.”
The project is still expected to last until the original end date in December. Beams cautioned drivers, however, that the shuffling of the construction schedule means that workers will be working closer to traffic in order to complete landscaping and road painting.
In the meantime, he said officials have tried to soften the blow of early road closures by not beginning work until 8:30am, after the peak travel times for parents and school buses.
“They call it organized chaos,” Beams joked. “Organized – but it’s always chaos.”
