Weekend closure planned for section of Seward Meridian Parkway

What you need to know:

• A section of Seward Meridian Parkway just south of Bogard Road will be closed from 9 p.m. Friday to 4 a.m. Monday as crews remove temporary pipes that rerouted Cottonwood Creek during bridge construction.
• The closure is part of a $44 million road widening and extension project to expand Seward Meridian Parkway from two to four lanes, replace a bridge, and add medians, a bike path and signalized intersections.
• While most of the project is expected to be completed this year, some final road work may be delayed due to schedule setbacks and the need to prepare the site for winter conditions.

WASILLA — A section of Seward Meridian Parkway just south of Bogard Road will close to all traffic this weekend as crews remove a series of pipes used to temporarily reroute Cottonwood Creek under the roadway.

The closure will run from 9 p.m. Friday to 4 a.m. Monday, state transportation officials said, and will affect about half a mile of roadway between Birch View Drive and Bogard Road.

The pipes were temporarily installed earlier this year to divert Cottonwood Creek during construction of a new bridge over the area, said Jonathan Tague, a state Department of Transportation project engineer overseeing the work.

Residents who live off Cottonwood Way will need to access their neighborhood from Birch View during the closure, he said, while those on the eastern section of Palmdale Drive should enter via San Diego Drive at Bogard and cross Seward Meridian.

The work is part of a multi-year, $44 million Seward Meridian widening and extension project that stretches from the Palmer-Wasilla Highway to about two miles north at Seldon Road.

The bulk of the project is slated for completion this year, including expanding the two-lane road to four lanes, constructing two new bridge spans and a bike path, and installing center medians, Tague said. Two new signalized intersections will also come online soon, including one at Cottonwood Elementary that will change the student drop-off process when school starts, he said.

But final work on a new extension connecting the roadway that terminates near Fronteras Charter School with the portion that runs south from Bogard might be pushed to next year, Tague said.

“Their goal is to get it all done,” he said. “Anytime schedules slip — which we’ve slipped a couple of weeks — then you’re getting into trying to figure out, ‘Can we really get this done? What’s that look like?’”

Part of the challenge, Tague said, is the extensive work required to get the project to a stopping point before winter.

“I know people are thinking, ‘It’s still summer,’ but we’re already looking at, OK, what we have to think about now is how do we stabilize things and button up for winter?” he said. “We have to start planning now for that.”

-- Contact Amy Bushatz at contact@matsusentinel.com