Data center Highway LL detour to end next week

Highway LL on Port Washington’s north side will reopen to local traffic on Monday, but as a gravel road with a 25 mph speed limit, City Engineer Roger Strohm said.

Trucks coming to and from the Vantage Data Centers Lighthouse Campus will be directed to use other routes, Strohm said — a measure meant to relieve some of the stress caused by construction traffic on Highway KW and Lake Drive.

“The intention is to keep the Vantage traffic off there,” Aaron Groh, municipal manager with Kapur and Associates, the engineering firm on the project, told aldermen while acknowledging some construction trucks will likely “leak through there.”

The long awaited reopening was a result of a change order approved Tuesday by the Port Washington Common Council that not only adjusted the cost of the $5.2 million project that extends sewer and water to the Vantage Data Centers Lighthouse Campus property but also provides for the maintenance of Highway LL.

The agreement calls for Vinton Construction, the contractor on the project, to maintain the gravel road, “essentially keeping the gravel in place,” Strohm said.

The company will be out on the road with a grader and compacting roller twice a week while there is frost in the ground, he said, and daily after the frost is out.

“Nothing should be an issue for more than 24 hours,” Strohm said.

Groh said the intent is to have the road paved in May.

Mayor Ted Neitzke asked if the city’s street department could do the maintenance work since the cost will be paid through the tax incremental financing district for the data center, not property taxes.

“I’m just asking you to consider it,” he said.

Before the road is reopened, Strohm said, a culvert needs to be installed, something that will be done by the end of this week. Signage and lane delineators will be installed on Friday in preparation for the reopening.