Overnight Highway 101 closures start Tuesday evening near Healdsburg

Highway 101 will be closed in both directions south of central Healdsburg for at least two nights so road crews can complete overnight pavement surfacing work leading to the Healdsburg Avenue overpass.

The grinding and repaving project will run between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Tuesday and Wednesday nights. A closure for a third night into Friday morning may occur if necessary. Drivers in both directions will be diverted to the South Healdsburg-Old Redwood Highway off-ramp and promptly back onto the highway at the nearest on-ramp during the work, avoiding a detour through the city.

“It (sounds) much more alarming than it actually is,” said James Cameron, a Sonoma County Transportation Authority spokesman. “There will no effect to downtown Healdsburg on any of that. All of it will be self-contained.”

The work is designed to remove a dip in the roadway surface leading to the overpass. Supervisor James Gore, whose district includes the area, voiced frustration about not being given notice ahead of time about the work or the highway closures.

“I had been very loud, because I live right there and on behalf of my constituents, on the danger of that dip right there,” he said. “I always appreciate work being done, but I also always appreciate getting a heads-up about what’s getting done. A freeway closure is a big deal. It’s not a small deal.”

The project, which included grout-injection work ahead of the repaving, was originally expected to get underway last November and be finished by this summer. Caltrans did not respond to inquiries about the reason for the delay Tuesday.

Contra Costa County-based Gordon N. Ball Inc. was awarded the $1.4 million road construction contract in September 2018. The overnight closures will cease by no later than Friday morning, and the project is now anticipated to be finished by Oct. 1, including final pavement striping.

Messages left for Gordon N. Ball’s project manager were not returned Tuesday.

The work is separate from the so-called Big Pave project, which will repave Highway 101 along 24 miles in both directions from Windsor to Cloverdale at a total price tag of about $164 million. The project is funded by state and federal gas-tax dollars through the State Highway Operations and Protection Program.

The first phase of that repaving work - a 14-mile leg from Windsor to Geyserville - wrapped up last fall at a cost of $74 million. The second phase, which is estimated at the remaining $90 million, will complete the other 10 miles on each side of the highway, from Geyserville to Cloverdale. It will also include repair or replacement of more than 55 culverts across the entire 24-mile stretch.

Caltrans plans to put the second phase of construction out to bid by the end of the year, with construction scheduled to start next year, according to the SCTA’s Cameron. The project is expected to take two years and is scheduled to be finished by end of 2021, bringing to close one of northern Sonoma County’s largest infrastructure projects in five decades.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin Fixler at 707-521-5336 or kevin.fixler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @kfixler.