Downtown Columbus will be a little harder to navigate next week while Columbus Light and Water works to repair pedestrian signals at Fifth Street North and Second Avenue North.
The intersection will be closed Monday morning, with the closure to potentially stretch until Friday.
Mayor Keith Gaskin announced the closure at his Wednesday morning press conference.
“It’s the corner with Zachary’s, the (Trotter Convention Center) and the Lowndes County Courthouse,” Gaskin said. “Starting early Monday morning that intersection will be blocked.”
The closure will begin at 7:30 a.m. Monday, CLW General Manager Angela Verdell told The Dispatch.
CLW will be replacing conduit and wiring that controls the pedestrian heads on each of the four corners of the intersection.
“The whole reason this is happening is because the (heads) are no longer operational,” explained City Engineer Kevin Stafford. “The wiring that runs to and from the controller has been damaged.”
Stafford said normally it would just be a matter of pulling out the old wiring via a conduit and replacing it with new, but that is not possible in this case.
“The conduit is either crushed or damaged,” Stafford said. “CLW has tried, and they can’t get any of those cables through.”
It’s not practical to simply do a road bore, Stafford said, because the intersection has “a web of infrastructure” running underneath it.
“Any boring we would have done would have been in very tight quarters, and would have the potential to hit any one of those underground utilities,” Stafford said.
CLW will cut the road, install the conduits at a depth of about 18 inches, and replace the wiring for the pedestrian heads, Stafford said.
Once the work is done, the pedestrian crossings will be re-striped, Stafford said.
Verdell said any issues with the existing traffic signals will also be addressed while the crews are at work.
“All of that is slated to be done in a three- or four-day window,” Stafford said.
Verdell estimated the cost at $50,000.
Doug Pellum, who owns Zachary’s, located at the corner of Fifth and Second Avenue, said he expected the work would put a dent in his business.
“It’s going to hit us hard,” Pellum said. “People normally avoid construction areas. I drove through West Point to get to Columbus from Starkville today because I wanted to avoid the Highway 82 traffic jam.”
Mississippi Department of Transportation is repaving Highway 82 between Highway 45 South and the Military Road ramps in Columbus. Work is expected to be complete in summer 2024.
Pellum said it would be worth it in the long run, though.
“In the last 20 years I’ve seen five (pedestrians) hit leaving (Zachary’s) at lunchtime,” Pellum said. “… If we can save someone from getting hit, it’ll be worth it. For progress to happen, you have to sacrifice a little business for it.”
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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