The Sedona City Council approved a $684,178.75 change order covering the repaving of the Uptown stretch of State Route 89A that it owns between the “Y” roundabout and Owenby Way on April 22, as well as the reconstruction of the new shared use path between Forest Road and L’Auberge Lane, which is subsiding due to rushed construction to open the path by spring break 2024.

“In our scoping of the project, working with the contractor, we did 18 cores that then found out deficiencies in the pavement that when we originally looked at, that wasn’t obvious,” Director of Public Works Kurt Harris told the council. “The average pavement condition went from failure to good substantial. The average weighted one was fair. From that, we came up with a plan to do a detailed improvement to get the road back up to where it’ll be the most durable.”

The original contract with Combs Construction for the widening of northbound SR 89A to two lanes, addition of a left turn lane and construction of the shared use path was valued at $4,427,236.27, of which $230,100 was earmarked for milling and repaving of SR 89A. The April 22 change order was the fourth for the project; three previous change orders totaled $339,280.12, increasing the total value of the contract to $5,450,695.14.

“We pushed this project to the end of this fiscal year in order to do it as night work so we’re not interrupting traffic and business and so on, and fortunately with our contractor, Combs, they’ve actually held on to the asphalt unit price context, so that’s another reason we wanted to bring this to you, to take advantage of that value,” Harris said. “The whole point is to have those paving temperatures at nighttime to do this … usually 55 degrees and rising. This time in May, June, it shouldn’t be any issue at all.”

“This is pretty much an outreach project and a traffic control project with paving kind of attached,” associate engineer Johnathan Hoffman said.

Harris said it would likely take about two weeks to complete the repaving, which will be staggered to minimize traffic disruptions.

“Since it’s so complicated, it’s longer than we’d like, but they’re going to have to mill out six inches, and then come up to three, and go back to four,” Harris said. “It’s all about trying to do it at the lowest possible price.”

Tiny Paw Prints

The change order will also cover repairs to the subsiding shared use path along State Route 89A.

“When we built that big retaining wall, we were in a rush last year to get it open for spring break,” Harris said after the meeting. “Probably should have left it as [decomposed granite] gravel because it needed time to settle, even with the heavy compaction. So it had post-settlement, so it cracked. So part of the contractor warranty is going come in and replace it.

“What they’re doing is they’re saw-cutting and removing all that now that we’re past spring break. Then they can get that concrete done so it’ll be ready for the paving. We’re just going to replace that vertical crack, add more expansion joints, and that’s when I talked about we’re going to add animal footprints down the middle.”

The new plans for the path include the addition of pawprints in the concrete “down where the skip line is in the median to bring that art value into that Uptown area,” Harris said. Answering a question from Councilman Pete Furman, Harris said the additional cost for adding the footprints would be about $7,000.

“We’re going to match the contractor,” Harris later said with regard to the cost of the path repairs. “We pushed them to pave even though we were kind of, let’s see what happens, and indeed it fell some. They’re going to remove it all, do all the labor, we’re just going to pay for the concrete.”

Council approved the change order and the paw prints unanimously. City staff also plan to replace the interpretive panels that formerly lined the sidewalk overlooking Oak Creek at a future date.