After Delay, New Street Lights on the Way

After some delay, light will soon return to the southeastern corner of the village.

The village has been working since the late 1990s to replace an incandescent series of street lights from the 1940s with a more modern pole design and high-pressured sodium lights. Currently, crews are replacing street lights in the area north of Hampton Road, south of Henry Clay Street, west of Oakland Avenue and east of Ardmore Avenue.

Assistant Village Engineer Aaron Jahncke said the project started in October and was originally expected to be finished around Christmas, but he now expects the street lights to be installed and in working order by March 1.

Jahncke said the project was pushed back by an unexpected manufacturer delay, as the village did not receive the complete stock of poles until Feb. 2.

“We only had 50 poles through Christmastime,” he said.

While the village was about a dozen poles short in mid-January, Interim Village Manager Matt Schuenke said crews were focused on installing the poles that had arrived already. As a result, unlit street lights have been a common site in the southeastern area of the village.

“We have been pushing them to get anything to light anything they can get lit,” Schuenke said at a February Village Board meeting. “We are encouraging them to do that as soon as possible so we can start to see some light.”

Additionally, crews were limited in how fast they could move because street lights had to first be installed on Fairmount Avenue before they could start other blocks in the neighborhood.

“We had to get Fairmount done before we could start anything else,” Jahncke said.

In addition to installing 91 poles and lights, the crews will also be replacing 1,800 feet of underground wiring that has been in the ground for 40 to 60 years.

Once the current project is finished, the village has two remaining series of street lights to replace before all 1,400 lights in the village are up to date.

In the spring, the village will replace old street lights between Hampton Road and Glendale Avenue in the area between Oakland and Ardmore avenues.