MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The City of Morgantown is ready to move forward with the 2025 Street Improvement Project which includes plans to start repaving a heavily-used road near downtown by the end of the year.
City council recently approved a bid contract with Parrotta Paving to pave approximately six miles of road for approximately $803,000, with a separate contract awarded for the reconstruction of North High Street at a value of approximately $152,000.
Morgantown Director of Engineering and Public Works Damien Davis told council the plan is to start the work in the next month.
“As part of that, we’re doing about six miles of roadway, likely roads probably won’t get started until the spring, but we are going to work with the contractor, talk to them depending on the weather, and see if we can get started on North High Street immediately,” said Davis. “That would be our main priority.”
According to Davis, the reconstruction of North High Street will include a complete replacement of the predominantly brick-layered piece of road that is heavily used during the regular school year for West Virginia University students. Work on the project will move forward after delays related to the replacement of water and sewer lines by the Morgantown Utility Board as well as the rebuilding of an underground steam tunnel by WVU contractors. With streetscape improvements included in the project, Davis hopes to have contractors starting work within the next few weeks.
“We’re trying to get that done this season depending on the weather,” said Davis. “That road’s in pretty rough shape, and we’ve been kind of kicking it down the road, as all the utilities have slowly gotten their things replaced, and WVU got their steam lines and their steam tunnel fixed, and so now finally everybody else is done with their projects, and we can get started with ours.”
The remaining repavements scheduled as part of the six-mile 2025 Street Improvement Project will include focused areas in neighborhoods across the seven wards in the city including repavements of Pennsylvania Avenue and Euclid Avenue in the South Park and Greenmont neighborhoods as well as the repavement of Eastland Avenue and Gibbons Street, a few minutes’ walk away from Mylan Puskar Stadium.
Davis said the bid came in under budget so the leftover funds will be used to support ADA-approved sidewalk improvements in 2026.
“This came in a little under budget, we anticipated a little more, so we’re going to take the rest of this money and put this into an ADA project that we’ve been kind of kicking around, ” said Davis.