A quick update on what’s up with the sewer and road work planned for 17th Avenue and Parkway Drive …
The bulk of the project, initially set to begin this summer, will now be done next spring and completed by the end of June 2012.
You’ll recall that the project includes a variety of stormwater and sanitary sewer work, including installing and rerouting stormwater pipes in the 500 block of Parkway Drive, as well as the resurfacing of 17th Avenue from Rawson Avenue to Hemlock.
This document provides a good summary of the contemplated work and reasons for it.
Contracts for the stormwater and sanitary sewer work have been advertised and will be opened Nov. 22. Once a contractor is chosen, some off-street work and fabrication of structures needed for the work can be done over the winter. The sewer work is set for completion by May 25, according to the contract advertisement.
The roadwork will be advertised separately, with an estimated completion by the end of June — in time for Parkway and 17th to act as an alternate route during the Pennsylvania-Nicholson expansion project set to begin in July.
The delay was caused by extra review and design work necessary when the city decided to change the scope of the 17th Avenue roadwork and resurface all the way from Rawson to Hemlock, instead of the shorter length we were initially looking at.
I’ll keep you posted as this project progresses.
South Milwaukee Blog 
Why not delay the 17th avenue project and complete it after the Nicholson expansion? It makes not sense to repave a residental street then imediately open it as an alternate route that sees very heavy traffic. The road is beat up now, so why not let it get beat a little more before resurfacing? That will make the new 17th avenue road last a lot longer and stretch the taxpayers hard earned money.
I understand your viewpoint on this, but I’d rather not see the city wait until 2013 to do this work … and if we wait until the Nicholson project is complete, that’s what we’d be looking at. We were initially planning this project for this summer. This is important flood mitigation work that should be done ASAP. We owe it to the residents in that area to do so. And the roadwork should be done at the same time as the flood prevention project, so we don’t have to rip up the road on two different occasions to get this done.