Highway 14 work resumes in Courtland

COURTLAND, Minn. (KEYC) - After a long Year One and a winter filled with maintenance planning, Year Two of the Highway 14 project officially kicked off Monday.

Crews were able to get beams placed for two bridges last December, which allowed them to jump into work as soon as spring arrived.

“We’re pretty fortunate that the weather turned around in even a week for us, so there’s not a lot of mess that we’re having to walk through,” said Project Manager Todd Kjolstad. “So, we’ll be decking this bridge, the westbound, and then we’ll go right into the eastbound and probably place concrete for the decks sometime in early May.”

MnDOT says that there was some fear that the winter’s high snow total would create a messy spring, but that the gradual thaw allowed work zones to be cleared safely and cleanly.

Crews say that while they would have liked to be back to work in March, they are still comfortable with their goal of finishing the project by fall.

“Most of what we got done last year was really going to be contingent on the weather, so we were able to place a lot of plastic soils,” said Kjolstad. “This year is going to be aggregate focused as well as concrete paving. So we can get a lot of that done by the end of the summer. We feel like we should have a pretty good chance to be opening up to the general public by the middle of October.”

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