Visitors can still use lot during paving
By Joseph Goral
Staff Writer
jgoral@mihomepaper.com
OXFORD — Demolition and resurfacing began on the Oxford Village Hall’s parking lot on April 15, marking the beginning of a project the village has been preparing for over at least five years.
The work transitioned from being a three-phase project to a single phase after the Oxford Village Council approved the change in November of last year.
The change goes back to 2019 when debt, bonds and when the price tag was around three-quarters of a million dollars, according to village Manager Joseph Madore. Three stages meant payment could be made in smaller chunks, but each stage would take place in consecutive years for a total of three years to complete the entire project.
Today, Madore said the bonds are paid off and revenue is okay, meaning it makes more sense to do the entire project at once in terms of time and cost.
“It’s a little more painful for us to deal with, you know, having the whole parking lot torn apart,” Madore said. “But it will (help) to have it (paved) in one time now, not one (phase) this year, one’s next year and one’s the following year.”
Had the project taken place over three years, village council would have needed to deal with annual cost rises in labor and materials. No rising costs over time saved “a couple hundred thousand” dollars, Madore said.
The three-phase project, which would have been done over the course of three years starting in 2024, was set to come in at just under $800,000, Madore told the Leader in November 2023.
“Paving, and all the sidewalk work, all the underground drain work, and all that stuff should be done by the last day of May,” Madore said. “Now, there might be some restoration work to do, some singe maybe to be still put up, but the substantial completion date is by the end of May.”
While the parking lot’s access points will be opened and closed though out the project, drivers visiting Village Hall can still park in parts of the lot that are not actively being worked on. Access into Village Hall will remain throughout the project.
Madore also said he encourages residents to pay their upcoming water bills online if they do not want to deal with navigating the parking lot.