A section of U.S. 321 between Lenoir and Blowing Rock will be closed overnight Mondays and Thursdays for blasting and road cleanup through July.
The closures, which start next week, are intended to speed up construction on the $64 million road-widening project.
The highway will be closed for the 6.6 miles between Kirby Mountain and Blackberry roads starting at 7 p.m. Mondays and re-opening at 5 a.m. Tuesdays. It will be closed from 7 p.m. Thursdays and re-open at 5 a.m. Fridays.
Construction started in February 2005, and the road has often been closed between noon and 2 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Those closures will continue.
The N.C. Department of Transportation's signed detour route is through Wilkes County, from Lenoir on N.C. 18 to U.S. 421 and then on to Boone and U.S. 321 to Blowing Rock.
The contractor, W.C. English Inc. is expected to do the evening blasting as close to 7 p.m. as possible and then spend the overnight hours cleaning up debris so the highway can re-open in the mornings.
Frank Gioscio Jr., the DOT's resident engineer for the project, said the previous two-hour window for blasting and clean up twice a week has allowed the contractor to work with only a small amount of rock at a time.
The project is about 85 percent complete, he said, but will require more rock removal at the lower end.
"That's what's holding us up," he said. "We're hoping (the contractor) will be able to blast a whole lot of rock at one time and move it quicker."
The project, which is costing about $10 million per mile, is requiring the removal of some 7.8 trillion pounds of rock by dump truck.
The volume of the rock was anticipated, but Gioscio said there have been a lot of challenges based on the rock formations, the layering of the rock and the geography.
The contractor also will have built 10 retaining walls by the time the project is finished this fall.
The next and final phase of the U.S. 321 widening project, from Blackberry Road to the area near Shoppes on the Parkway in Blowing Rock, is scheduled to go out for bids in the summer of 2011.
mmitchell@wsjournal.com
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