South Naperville road realignment set to start Monday
A diagonal road that stops and starts in south Naperville is getting realigned beginning Monday to allow a new subdivision to take shape.
When the project concludes, Wolf's Crossing Road will be continuous and connected between Normantown Road and 95th Street - instead of separated by an odd geometry of intersections that leaves an empty field in between.
The city and Pulte Home Corp. are splitting the cost of the roughly $1.5 million project, which will be conducted in three phases this year and potentially into 2018, said Bill Novack, Naperville's director of transportation, engineering and development.
The end result will be a clear, 36-acre site on which Pulte will build Ashwood Crossing, a neighborhood of 61 houses and 42 duplexes for people 55 and older, and a connected road running north/south along the western edge of the future development.
As it stands now, the northern portion of Wolf's Crossing Road ends at 95th Street.
Then the southern portion, which runs on a diagonal, starts at 248th Avenue, a block or so south of 95th Street, and heads southwest. The southern portion is a two-lane road that serves as one of the main connections between south Naperville, Aurora and Oswego.
Wolf's Crossing will become a two-lane road with a center lane for left turns when the city rebuilds it in a project that also will add storm sewers, curbs, gutters and lighting, Novack said. The road will be wider where it connects to 95th Street to match dimensions of the northern segment that continues from there.
The first phase of the project, set to kick off Monday, will extend the northern portion of Wolf's Crossing Road south from its end at 95th Street, into the field where Ashwood Crossing will be built, toward the diagonal-running southern portion of the road. This segment is expected to be built by mid-May.
The second phase will require a three-day closure of Wolf's Crossing Road between 248th Avenue and the Canadian National railroad tracks near Normantown Road as crews make the final connection between the existing and new stretches of road.
"With that being a skinny two-lane road, we really can't put traffic on one side," Novack said. "We really have to shut down the road to rebuild it."
The third phase, late this year or next year, will involve rebuilding the stretch west of the new connection to the railroad tracks. This must take place last, Novack said, because it will require a closure and a detour onto other streets such as Route 30 or Eola Road, both of which are scheduled to be under construction this summer in projects led by the Illinois Department of Transportation or the city of Aurora.