GRAND ISLAND, Neb. — The city of Grand Island has begun the second phase of its long-running South Locust Street reconstruction project, marking a critical step in modernizing aging infrastructure while improving roadway safety and mobility.
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The latest phase, which started this week, will focus on the stretch between Oklahoma Avenue and Charles Street. The roadway will be fully closed during construction, with work expected to continue through the summer and wrap up by Sept. 1.
This phase builds on earlier improvements and is part of a broader, decades-long effort to upgrade one of the city’s key transportation corridors.
City officials say the second phase is more complex than the first due to the extensive underground work required. Crews will replace century-old pipes and a water main system while installing new storm sewer infrastructure and completing sanitary sewer repairs.
Public Works Senior Project Engineer Tim Golka highlighted the unpredictability of such work.
“When you’re digging, you never quite know what you’re going to find. So we do have a lot of stuff that’s going to be going on underground. So people probably won’t see a lot of progress on the surface, but there’s going to be a lot of work going on underground,” Golka said. “When you do a corridor like this, you want to tear it up once. And so unfortunately, we want to get to everything we can.”
Maintaining service to nearby properties while upgrading utilities presents additional logistical hurdles.
“The challenges are as to getting, keeping that old main in service, getting the new one constructed, getting the new services built and reconnected back to the adjacent property owners,” Golka said. “That in itself and how you stage that along with all the other construction and maintaining access to people and having these open holes all over the place becomes a real challenge.”
In addition to utility upgrades, the project includes a full reconstruction of the roadway from Fonner Park Road to Koenig Street. The existing asphalt surface will be replaced with a concrete curb-and-gutter design, along with new sidewalks, a bike trail, roadway lighting and updated signage.
A key feature of this phase is the construction of a roundabout at the intersection of South Locust Street, Anna Street and Bismark Road — a design change that emerged later in the planning process.
“That one-car lot on the southwest corner of South Locust and Anna really became a problem spot for us and the owners of that were willing to sell to us,” Golka said. “Once that sale went through, we had some more space to look at, so we went back and evaluated a roundabout option and it fit really well.”
The redesign also includes moving sidewalks farther away from the roadway to improve pedestrian safety.
Officials note that improvements along South Locust Street date back several decades, following tornado damage in the 1980s, with incremental upgrades continuing through the 1990s and beyond.
“We’ve been essentially working on South Locust since the ’80s tornadoes. The project down south began right after that and then in the 90s, we got the interchange built on the interstate,” Golka said. “We’ve been building all the way into town for the past 40 years and this is kind of the last phase to getting downtown.”
The Grand Island City Council awarded the $9,044,222.01 contract to Elsbury Construction LLC in February 2025.
Originally reported by Andrew Collins in KSNB Local 4.
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