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Main Street Construction to Resume in Spring

Planting trees, redoing sidewalks on the other side of the street and the actual lane reconfiguration on Main Street will have to wait until springtime.

City officials say construction on Main Street has wrapped up for the season, so theoretically the commute through the downtown should be a little easier now. Community Development Director Karen Sawyer said on Tuesday that due to the colder weather setting in, the project will pause for the winter and resume again in the spring. Sawyer said the project has reached the point where it was expected to be at given the seasonal weather. So far, workers have torn up and replaced the sidewalk on the northerly side of the street all the way down to CVS, generally widening it and installing brick pavers, along with "bump outs" near crosswalks. Orange barrels dot the length of the street, covering patches of dirt where new trees will be planted. …

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Night Construction Starts Monday to Replace Old Gas Lines Along Main Street

National Grid is expected to take the next two months to replace cast iron gas lines that run under Main Street and are more than a century old.

If you happen to drive down Main Street regularly at night, you may want to find a detour, starting Monday. Starting April 9 and over the next two months, National Grid will be replacing old gas main lines running from Peabody Square under Main Street and into Salem. The cast iron pipes are actually more than 120 years old and long overdue to be replaced to ensure efficient operation and service for the future, say city officials. Community Development Director Karen Sawyer says the city has given National Grid permission to work at night for the duration of the project, along with some daytime hours as needed, to minimize disruption to traffic patterns as well as the affect on downtown businesses. Crews will be working Monday to Friday, 7…

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