I spoke with Anthony Stakston from Mn/DOT last week about the HWY 3 reconstruction project. He’s engineer who is the main contact for this project. I wanted to know when demolition would take place on the buildings that need to be removed for the highway work.

He told me that the contractor that won the bid is planning to start the week of January 3 weather permitting. At this point, weather doesn’t appear to be a factor. Anthony thought that the work would take about a week to complete.

There are seven buildings that will be coming down: the building on the southeast corner of 2nd and HWY 3 (formerly the home of the Byzantine restaurant), Bill’s Pizza Palace and the house to the east of it, the Exhaust Pros garage, Godfather’s Pizza, the Kump Lumber Store, and the Tom Thumb Market.

The work on the highway is still scheduled to begin in April 2005.