By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – Crews will close a portion of Alabaster Boulevard for 11 days beginning on Monday, July 17, as they perform repairs on a sagging portion of the road between Westwood Baptist Church and Candlewood Suites.

Alabaster leaders announced the road closure during a July 10 City Council meeting after approving a change order to the original bid for the repair work.

During its April 24 meeting, council members voted unanimously to award a $104,895 bid to the Southeastern Sealcoating company 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 will come from the city’s capital projects fund.

As a result of the change order, the city will pay Southeaster Sealcoating an additional $25,705. The additional expense will allow the company to add further improvements to the section of roadway to keep rain water from pooling in the travel lanes, said Ward 1 Councilwoman Sophie Martin.

Crews have already completed curb repairs to the area in preparation for the lane repairs, said Alabaster City Manager Brian Binzer. The section is slightly north of Candlewood Suites, where the landscaped center portion of the road ends.

Binzer said the city has allotted 11 days for the lane repairs, which will close both the north- and southbound travel lanes. Because Alabaster Boulevard serves as a thoroughfare from the Weatherly and Ballantrae neighborhoods to the Propst Promenade shopping center, the city is looking to have the road reopened before the tax-free school supply weekend in late July, Binzer said.

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.