New Town Main Street fully open for business
By Jerry W. Kram
The Beetles had a hit with "The Long and Winding Road," and while New Town’s Main Street isn’t that long and doesn’t wind much at all, the process of getting the street replaced from the sewers to the sidewalks has been very long and very winding.
North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple and dignitaries including New Town Mayor Dan Uran and North Segment Representative Ken Hall were on hand to officially open Main Street in a ribbon cutting ceremony on Wednesday morning.
In a presentation before the ribbon cutting, North Dakota Department of Transportation director Grant Levi said the Main Street project dates back to 2008. Construction was to have started in 2009, but by then the Bakken Boom was in full swing and as many as 14,000 vehicles a day passed by. The traffic was too much to detour safely, so the Main Street project was put on hold until the Highway 23 bypass was in place, which wasn’t finished until 2014. The cost of the Main Street Project, Highway 23 bypass and improvements to North Dakota Highways 1804 totaled $56 million.
