Oliver Street Paving

Spicer Group assisted the City of Owosso by providing the design and construction inspection of nearly a half-mile of complete roadway reconstruction on Oliver Street between Washington Street and Oak Street. Oliver Street runs through a historic part of Owosso and the last time the street was worked on was 1940. During excavation of the old roadbed, crews had to remove a layer of asphalt, a layer of brick and a layer of concrete before getting down to the original sand base. Normally, sand is used as the bottom-layer base when fully reconstructing a road, however the project team chose to use a special geotextile separator fabric in substitution of the 12 to 18 inches of sand base that would typically be used. This saved extra time and materials by eliminating the need to dig deeper to allow enough room for the sand base. Eight inches of aggregate base was placed on top of the geotextile layer before being covered by five inches of fresh hot mix asphalt (HMA).

Nearly 2,700 feet of new 8-inch water main was replaced prior to work on the roadway surface. This particular stretch of street hosts an extremely old and historic grove of very large oak trees which were directly in the path of the new water main’s route. Instead of tearing them down, the project team opted to horizontal directionally drill 1,100 feet of the water main several feet below them. This significantly reduced the amount of disruption to the area and also saved the trees. The remaining water main was installed through the open-trench process. Other design factors that helped keep the residential characteristics of Oliver Street was the addition of bike lanes and reconstruction of the sidewalks with new ADA ramps on the north side of the street.