By By ERIN VER BERKMOES / Niles Daily Star
NILES - Area residents will have to contend with even more construction starting on Monday, June 6, as the Michigan Department of Transportation begins the job of replacing the Brandywine Creek culvert.
A culvert is a drain crossing which goes under a road or embankment.
The project will take until the end of September to complete.
During this project a detour was to be put in place for northbound traffic coming into the city of Niles.
The detour would have taken motorists onto U.S.-12 to the exit near Southwestern Michigan College where they would get on Main Street and could take that to Silverbrook Avenue to get back onto South 11th Street.
Doing so would only have left one lane of southbound traffic flowing on the roadway. This did not make the business owners in the area very happy, according to Ron Sather, president and CEO of the Four Flags Area Chamber of Commerce
Business owners from along South 11th Street met with Sather and MDOT officials on May 18 to talk about the construction project and how it would effect them.
Sather and the business owners told the MDOT that the businesses wouldn't likely be able to handle the long term effects of having the road closed for the summer months.
One of the business owners who attended the meeting with Sather was Chris Tyler.
Sather and the business owners were successful in talks with the MDOT officials. They agreed during the project a northbound and southbound lane will be open, allowing traffic to both enter and leave the city.