Left, a repaved Michigan Avenue, seen here facing south in front of the current location of the Mid-State Technical College Campus. (City-Times photo)

By Brandi Makuski

It is official- Stevens Point is home to one of the top urban paving projects in the nation.

The American Concrete Paving Association awarded the city with its Gold Award in the Municipal Streets and Intersections- Less Than 30K Sq. Yards category during its annual ceremony held in Puerto Rico last December. While no representative from Stevens Point was able to attend, city leaders were presented with the awards at this week’s City Council meeting.

“Each year at the completion of the construction season our association goes out and we canvas all the projects constructed annually in Wisconsin and we look for award- winning projects,” said Kevin McMullen, President of the Wisconsin Concrete Pavement Association.

“That’s somewhere around 200 projects a year. At the end of 2012, with the encouragement of Director Schatschneider (Scott Schatschneider, Director of Public Works) and Alex (Saunders, city engineer), and Trierweiler Construction Company, we made the decision to nominate the Michigan Avenue project for the national Awards of Excellence in Concrete Paving.”

Marshfield- based Trierweiler was hired for the repaving project, which McMullen called a “truly great construction project” that stood next to 11 similar projects from across the country before winning.

The Michigan Avenue reconstruction project tied up most of summer 2012, when underground utilities were replaced between Maria Drive and Main Street. The repaving took just 7 days at the end of the project in August.

According to McMullen, the project involved 4,300 square feet of new curb and gutter, 23,000 square feet of new sidewalk, 400 square feet in driveways, six intersections and over 30 manhole covers.

“I don’t get to talk about dynamics very often,” said Mayor Andrew Halverson, who accepted one award from the association along with officials from Trierweiler as well as Saunders. “With internal conversations it generally tends to be more controversial- it could be grade appeals we have to talk about, it could be a pay plan, it could be labor and union issues. But I rarely get to talk about the way the union and cohesion of our departments and how well our teams work together. I have to tell you the way this particular team works day in and day out for the benefit of every citizen in the City of Stevens Point is truly amazing.”

Halverson said this was “100 percent a city project”, which was planned, administered and overseen by city officials- the first such city project in two decades.

“This is an award that best exemplifies the talents of the people who work for you, the people who work for this city day in and day out,” he added. “I’ve had the chance to accept a lot of awards on behalf of this community. This one, quite frankly, probably makes me the proudest because it’s the efforts of our staff and the way in which your administration works as a team to ensure the citizens gets what they deserve out of their tax dollars.”