By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – Crews with the Southeastern Sealcoating company will put the finishing touches on a recently repaired portion of Alabaster Boulevard in a few weeks, according to Alabaster leaders.

The company closed the road for 10 days in mid-July to repair a portion of the road, which connects the Propst Promenade shopping center with the Weatherly and Ballantrae neighborhoods. The section is slightly north of Candlewood Suites, where the landscaped center portion of the road ends.

During its April 24 meeting, council members voted unanimously to award a $104,895 bid to Southeastern Sealcoating to repave the portion of the roadway. Southeastern Sealcoating was the sole bidder on the project, which was advertised in March, and the funding for the bid came from the city’s capital projects fund.

In late July, the council approved a change order, through which the city agreed to pay Southeastern Sealcoating an additional $25,705. The additional expense allowed the company to add further improvements to the section of roadway to keep rain water from pooling in the travel lanes.

Although the roadway was reopened to traffic on July 26, the final portion of the repairs will not be made until late August, Alabaster City Manager Brian Binzer said.

Through the final round of repairs, the company will mill the roadway to level it off, and will install the final sealcoat on the asphalt. Binzer said the month between opening the roadway and making the final repairs gives the roadway time to settle before the project is finalized.

“I’d say we are about three weeks away on that,” Binzer said of finalizing the project. “When they go back out there, it will be a quick process. They’ll probably finish it in about a day.”

In 2014, an engineering study found Alabaster Boulevard to be in overall “poor” condition, with several sagging and damaged sections. Since the roadway was constructed in 2005, the road base and fill materials under the roadway have caused parts of the roadway to develop humps and “places where the pavement is graveling out,” Alabaster City Engineer Brett Tucker said previously.

The 2014 engineering study identified 11 areas in need of repairs, and the original bids to repair the entire roadway at once came in at about $750,000, which was significantly higher than the city had estimated.