BOARDMAN — Orange barrels on Western Reserve Road may seem like a s fixture, but the widening project along the corridor is progressing and may be completed with a slightly lower price tag.

The project began last year after a two-year delay, but Mahoning County Engineer Patrick Ginnetti said construction is likely to progress even more smoothly and will make travel along Western Reserve Road, from Hitchcock Road to South Avenue, safer and more efficient.

“This is a large, multi-year, several miles long project, and it’s going to create inconvenience and slow-downs,” he said. “It’s a necessary evil. When you’re doing road widening, there’s no easier, or magical, quicker way to do it, but once it’s done, it’s going to be a major, major improvement, and drastically change it for the better.”

The roughly $20 million project will widen the road and add a central dual-left turning lane and new traffic and railroad signals. It is expected to be completed in May 2026. The contractor is Marucci and Gaffney Excavating of Youngstown.

As of this week, Ginnetti said, the work, which was initially planned as two separate projects, is well underway but much more remains.

From Hitchcock Road east to Market Street, additional drainage infrastructure must be installed, a new signal will go in at the Glenwood Avenue-Sharrott Road-Western Reserve intersection, and final paving, restriping and final restoration remains thereafter.

From Market Street east to Southern Boulevard, much of the storm sewer is installed on the north side of the road. Ginnetti said the north side of Western Reserve is where most of the widening work is being done, although about 2 feet will be added along the south side.

One of the major pieces of the project includes installing a drop right westbound lane along Western Reserve at Southern Boulevard, which will work in tandem with the center left turning lane to keep traffic at that intersection moving.

Ginnetti said the intersection is one of the focal points for safety along the corridor. There will be signal upgrades to the railroad and a traffic signal installed for vehicles heading south on Southern Boulevard to be able to turn left onto Western Reserve.

“If you do it today with stop signs on Southern but nothing on Western Reserve, you may sit there for an hour trying to make a left turn,” he said. “And that’s where you run into some dangerous situations where somebody’s gonna try to beat the gap and you can have that T-bone crash that results in a fatality.”

From Southern Boulevard east to South Avenue, storm sewers need to be installed as well as additional lane widening on the north side. Once the north side is done, the work will flip over to the south side for widening and curbing, followed by overall paving, striping and final restoration.

DELAYS OF ALL KINDS

The project was scheduled to begin in 2021, but before it could get off the ground, other county work interfered.

Many years earlier, the Ohio EPA mandated that the wastewater treatment plant on Unity Road in New Middletown be converted from a treatment plant to a pump station. The plant sits at the headwaters of Honey Creek and the EPA determined that any additional effluent from the plant into the creek was likely to cause damage to the ecosystem.

The issue began before Ginnetti was elected to office, but it has become his problem. The county has completed upgrades at its Boardman wastewater treatment plant, which is where the Unity Road plant’s effluent will be rerouted, and installed a force main there. From that point, the new sanitary line will be built backwards to the Unity Road plant and the plant converted to a pump station.

Rudzik Excavating of Struthers is handling the roughly $40 million project. The line will zigzag from Unity Road, up Middletown Road, down Baird Road, up Calla Road, down Springfield Road, then up Western Reserve to the Five Points pump station, and from there to the Boardman plant.

“There were some delays at Southern Boulevard because we had to get under the railroad tracks, and that little railroad changed ownership maybe five times in the span of five years,” Ginnetti said. “So, every time we got close to having the agreement to go underneath the tracks, they changed ownership and we had to start over. So, that delayed the sewer project for about five years.”

He said the county was able to work with the Ohio Department of Transportation — whose procedures it follows and ultimately oversees all road engineering projects — to condense the Western Reserve project from a two-phase project to a single project carried out in multiple segments.

Ginnetti said the delays ultimately worked in the county’s favor as the project will be completed more quickly and likely cost less.

“As we went east of Market Street, there would’ve been some temporary pavement and lane adjustments put in that would’ve then been dug out with the second phase,” he said. “So there was some savings, plus you get some efficiencies when you can roll right through.”

Ginetti said it also eliminated problems with water flow during construction.

“On Western Reserve Road east of Market Street, it drains to the west, so that gives us the ability to get that storm sewer built now to drain that side of the project,” he said. “Whereas before where you’d have had to stop and start up with the second phase and you’d be fighting water.”

And of course, the combined project means fewer interruptions to traffic along the corridor.

“It’s probably better that the projects went one right after the other,” Ginnetti said. “If we would have done the sanitary sewer project and then phase one a year later, and then the next phase a year after that, it would’ve angered people more because there would have been multiple delays.”

That does not mean traffic will not be snarled at times between now and spring of 2026, but Ginnetti said the county intends to keep it moving as smoothly as possible.

“We always will maintain two-way eastbound and westbound traffic,” he said. “There may be some delays at times, and we may have periods where it may be restricted with temporary lights allowing it only to go one lane at a time, but for the most part we should be able to complete the bulk of the project with two lanes maintained.”

ECONOMIC GROWTH

Ginnetti made it clear that his office is not involved with economic development. In fact, it is illegal for a county engineer’s office to take on a project for that purpose. Infrastructure improvements or changes required for commercial or residential development must be paid for by the company or developer, although the county engineer and sanitary engineer’s offices then take over operation and maintenance of those roads, pipes, signals, and other infrastructure.

But the project’s value to the county’s economic prospects is not lost on him.

“We’re building things to improve efficiency, safety and capacity. Unfortunately, a lot of our projects are driven by congestion and accidents.” he said. “But when we’re doing a major road construction project, whether it’s widening a road or a sewer project, it’s not being done to promote development, but development follows it, because it enables growth. You’ve made travel lanes more efficient, safer. You’ve added maybe the ability to connect to sewer lines.” County Commissioner Anthony Traficanti echoed Ginnetti’s sentiments.

“Due to the continued growth that we’re having in Boardman and Beaver Townships, and a lot of it is now along that Western Reserve corridor, that widening project is necessary,” he said. “And it will attract new growth and new businesses.”

Traficanti said pains involved with the project are just the cost of doing business.

“This was a very complex and large project so you can only expect hiccups to happen, and we weren’t happy when these problems came up, but we worked through them,” he said. “Some of the businesses along there were frustrated with the traffic delays, but they said with the new space and easier traffic flow, it will make things better for them.”

Traficanti said the county has not received any bids or proposals for new businesses or developments, though he is confident they will.

“We are hoping the people do come in here, and I’m sure we’re going to get a lot of people interested in that area,” he said.

Traficanti said the zoning along the corridor is mixed between residential and commercial so he expects any new development will be a mix of new businesses and single- and multi-family residences.