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Road work contract awarded
Cass County Correspondent WALKER - Cass County Board awarded the contract Tuesday to reconstruct and pave County State Aid Highway 71 along the west shore of Ten Mile Lake to low bidder Young Excavating and Sewer of Hackensack.
Young's $3,329,276.88 bid, which ran 7.8 percent under engineering estimates, was the lowest of 11 bids the county received. Bids ran as high as $5,132,258.75.
Only three were more than the $3,614,085.37 estimate.
The project includes rebuilding and paving what has been a gravel road.
This project first was programmed for reconstruction in 1972, but objections to the scope of reconstruction over the intervening years led to many heated public hearings and repeated delays.
In the 1990s, some property owners took their concerns over preserving the rural woods scenic views along the road to the Legislature, which authorized a new class of roads.
CSAH 71 became the state's first designated Preservation Route.
While meeting state aid road standards, the final road design will include preserving and only slightly flattening many of the original hills and curves along the route, which in turn will lead to reduced speed limits compared with most flat, straight state aid roads.
People argued on one side they saw the road as unsafe, because of blind curves and steep hills. One woman, during a hearing, said she narrowly escaped serious injury by being able to pull quickly into a driveway as a school bus slid backward by her down an icy hill.
People on the other side argued for preserving the narrow, scenic road with the overhanging trees where they enjoy walking leisurely or driving slowly and seeing the beauty around them.
With so many years passing since the improvement first was proposed, some of the proponents and opponents have since died. At least one person was seriously injured when the car she was driving was struck as she pulled onto CSAH 71 from a side road.
In other highway business Tuesday, County Engineer David Enblom reported the county has received $105,000 from the state local road safety fund to provide streetlights on some rural intersections in the county. Seven are in the Cass Lake area.
One will be installed at the corner of CSAH 1 and 44 east of Pine River. Another is planned for CSAH 77 by Madden's Resort.
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