HERE COMES THE GRINDER — Night work to grind and repave Main Street in downtown Waynesville will require a road closure from 7 a.m.-7 p.m. for about two weeks starting Sept. 6. The grinder had been moved onsite to complete the Pigeon Street road work this week in time for the Main Street work to begin.

HERE COMES THE GRINDER — Night work to grind and repave Main Street in downtown Waynesville will require a road closure from 7 a.m.-7 p.m. for about two weeks starting Sept. 6. The grinder had been moved onsite to complete the Pigeon Street road work this week in time for the Main Street work to begin.

TIGHT SCHEDULE — The Main Street paving work falls after Labor Day but before the fall tourist season, and dodges most downtown festivals. The only event held during the two-week project time frame is a Block Party happening Saturday, Sept. 10.

HERE COMES THE GRINDER — Night work to grind and repave Main Street in downtown Waynesville will require a road closure from 7 a.m.-7 p.m. for about two weeks starting Sept. 6. The grinder had been moved onsite to complete the Pigeon Street road work this week in time for the Main Street work to begin.

HERE COMES THE GRINDER — Night work to grind and repave Main Street in downtown Waynesville will require a road closure from 7 a.m.-7 p.m. for about two weeks starting Sept. 6. The grinder had been moved onsite to complete the Pigeon Street road work this week in time for the Main Street work to begin.

TIGHT SCHEDULE — The Main Street paving work falls after Labor Day but before the fall tourist season, and dodges most downtown festivals. The only event held during the two-week project time frame is a Block Party happening Saturday, Sept. 10.

Main Street in downtown Waynesville will be closed to vehicular traffic from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. for about two weeks due to a repaving project that includes grinding up a few inches of the old asphalt first.

Work will begin Tuesday evening, Sept. 6, and run Sunday through Thursday nights — sparing merchants from the disruption on weekends. Main Street will remain open to pedestrians, but any vehicles parked on the street must be moved by 6:30 p.m. during the duration of the project.

While the work will no doubt cause headaches for restaurants open during evening hours and residents of upstairs apartments over Main, the timing is the best possible scenario the town could have hoped for.

The project was shoehorned in after Labor Day when the summer tourist season has wound down, but before the fall season has picked up. Paving isn’t possible once cooler weather arrives, so pushing it into November wasn’t an option.

“We worked very hard coordinating with both the Department of Transportation and their contractor WNC Paving to do this work during the optimum window,” Waynesville Town Manager Rob Hites said.

The project also had to work around downtown events — from street dances to art crawls.

“It’s been an endeavor,” Waynesville Public Works Director Jeff Stines said of the scheduling.

The only festival that falls during the project window is a downtown Waynesville Block Party on Saturday night, Sept. 10, so the town is working with the DOT’s paving contractor to take off that night.

Another variable was ensuring the Pigeon Street road work was finished first. The corridor leading into downtown has been closed for since early June for water line replacement, but needed to be open again before Main Street gets shut down.

The final phase of the Pigeon Street project — more grinding and repaving — will begin Wednesday, Aug. 31, and wrap up before the Main Street work begins.

“All the side streets off Pigeon will be open by then so traffic will still be able to function through downtown,” Stines said.

Town leaders have been lobbying the DOT to get Main Street on the repaving list for a few years now. Mayor Gary Caldwell said the condition of Main Street’s pavement has been an embarrassment to the town.

“I asked the DOT to ‘Please, please pave Main Street.’ It was one of my campaign pledges and I very excited to see it getting done,” Caldwell said. “It is going to look great for Waynesville.”

The work will occur from Academy Street at First Baptist to Walnut Street at Badcock Furniture. Any vehicles parked on that section of Main Street past 6:30 p.m. will get towed. The town has made new signs to line the street alerting people that their cars have to be moved.

The grinding phase — which will take about a week — could be noisy for businesses open during evening hours and those living in upstairs units on Main.

“The buildings on Main basically create a tunnel, so it will capture the sound rather than letting it dissipate,” Stines said. “If you are inside a building you will hear the rumbling noise, but it won’t be too loud to function.”

Those who are light sleepers may need to stock up on earplugs or find somewhere else to sleep for a few nights.

The entire stretch will be closed each night or whether the work will be done in sections. Since the project is under the DOT’s purview and carried out by a third-party contractor, the town has no control over the project.

“We are basically just the middle-man in trying to notify the public,” Stines said.

Work will be suspended on Friday and Saturday nights — that's a benefit to restaurant owners who would otherwise have to guess whether to order and prep the normal amount of food or whether to scale back staff.

The grinding portion of the work will take about a week, followed by another week of paving. The grinding shouldn’t create too much dust, Stines said.

A town utility crew will be on site each night in case something goes awry, like a water meter or connection being hit.

“If something out of the ordinary were to happen, we’d have them already there versus waiting for them to get out of bed and get the equipment and get up there,” Stines said. “We are trying to make it go as quickly and smoothly as possible.”

Main Street doubles as U.S. 276, and it takes a pounding as a result.

“Main Street is not just the town’s center of commerce, but it is also a well-traveled state highway. Due to the heavy truck traffic on Main, the road conditions have been deteriorating for a decade,” Hites said. “So it is not a matter of if but when the road has to be repaired.”

The prep work of grinding down 4 inches of asphalt will make the project stretch out longer, but is worth it, Hites said.

“We appreciate that the DOT didn’t just come in and slap an inch of asphalt on the road and call it done,” Hites said. “The degree to which they are rebuilding the road is a real credit to them.”

The grinding machine goes right up to the edge of the sidewalk, but the curb and sidewalk itself won’t be damaged. Hites said town crews have occasionally encountered old red brick below the road surface from days gone, however.

“One question is what is the grinding machine going to do when it hits the brick. It may be so powerful it doesn’t matter,” Hites said.

The grinder is an enormous piece of equipment. Moving it into place is a major operation, requiring wide-load permits and pilot cars. That’s one reason the Main Street grinding was scheduled on the heels of the Pigeon Street work since the grinder would already be here.

The contractor, WNC Paving, does all the DOT’s repaving projects across the region.

“While this job has a tremendous impact on the town, a two-week job involving less than a mile of pavement is not a big job in the scheme of things for them,” Hites said.

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