The wreckage of my past keeps haunting me
It just won't leave me alone
I still find it all a mystery
Could it be a dream?
The Road To Nowhere leads to me
-- Ozzy Osbourne
BY RICHARD JOHNSON
When I ask what’s up with the Christensen Road Project, the responses I get are all similar: Disaster. Fiasco. Shit Show.
To those in the community who are involved, it’s a topic that’s festering, ready to blow, whether that be in a headline or a court case. To the rest of the community, the families barely putting food on the table, it’s something that was voted on but doesn’t really matter.
In the words of one City Council member when asked to sum up the construction on Christensen Road,
he said, “Bad.” Another said, “Not going smoothly.” And yet another said, Frustrating. After the fighting between architects and our engineer and a few redesigns, it is finally moving forward, although the intersection on the north side is being redesigned.
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| This dirt road is planned to extend to U.S. 30 from the railroad tracks. |
Personally, I wish we had let Laramie County have it as its project.
The goal of this plan is to build an overpass over the Union Pacific Railroad tracks at Christensen Road near the Lowe's Distribution Center on Cheyenne’s east side. It would provide a much-needed route between U.S. 30 and Campstool Road.
In 2008, Felsburg, Holt and Ullevig completed a 35 percent design and cost estimate. At the time, the proposed extension across the tracks north of Commerce Circle and the two travel lanes expanding to four was estimated to cost about $13.6 million.
In 2012, voters approved a $2 million proposition on the sixth-penny sales tax ballot for design and to meet other requirements. By the time the city applied for the 2015 federal roads grant, costs had risen to an estimated $14.6 million.
During this time, Wyoming's congressional delegation thought it was more important to fight then-President Barack Obama than to work on its state’s infrastructure. Every time it was passed over. Maybe a little lamb’s blood on the door was needed.
In 2016, a campaign was started by a local real estate family to finally get this project going. After all, Lowes was offered a broken promise that the Christensen overpass would be done when it moved to town. A ton of coin was dropped, and $15 million for the project was finally approved on a sixth-penny measure.
Any one of the thousands of people working on Campstool Road knew it sucked to get out of work at 5 p.m. and have to drive into town to get back home on the east side. They needed another escape route. The project had every reason to succeed, but then government regulations and contractor’s greed got in the way. When you put everyone’s ego into the mix, you end up with a mess of nearly $20 million proportions.
Then elected officials learned an updated cost analysis had not been completed and Christensen was underfunded by about $2.5 million. To bring the project back into budget, a number of construction and utility relocation costs worth about $2 million were removed from the project scope. Another $1 million was cut from the original cost by removing a BOPU water line, which was deemed unnecessary. Instead of the four-lane bridge originally proposed, it is now two lanes.
The original designers were asked by city engineer Jim Voeller to change the design, which they didn’t agree with. So City Hall hired HDR with an open-ended contract so city engineering could arbitrarily change the design without the public or City Council’s input or knowledge. This included converting a planned roundabout to a four-lane intersection.
In January 2019, the design firm wrote in an email, “As a result, from this day forward, we shall have no liability and/or responsibility for the designs – it will be like we never signed or sealed anything for this project.”
The city cut the contract with the design firm in 2017, and the two agencies got into a pissing match about who did and said what. What is that saying about burning bridges?
The city press release stated, “We continue to work with our partners on this project and do not find it productive to engage in a debate with former partners that does not move us forward but rather, keeps us stagnant.”
In June of 2019, the Engineering Department told the City Council, “Initially, the project was planned to be constructed in one season, but it was decided that this was not possible.”
The City Council must have seen merit in this because it unanimously approved a $710,983 contract modification to an agreement with HDR Engineering.
Now it’s August 2019 and the contractors are jockeying for position against city staff. Complaints abound that the traffic engineer has never built a roundabout and thinks the grade doesn’t meet specs.
While the 4 percent grade outside the main radius of the driving circle is a concern for the traffic engineer, some longtime road builders are saying we aren’t building a runaway truck ramp out of the Eisenhower Tunnel. Rather, the proposed slope of the roundabout is within the 3 percent grade for two car lengths.
People in the know are upset that there is talk about another four-way stop that will cause mass casualties in the future. By the time infill reaches the intersection, all the people fighting will be dead. Future generations will be left to mop up a mess that could have been avoided.
The future? Since when did city government worry about that? After all, it’s about getting your picture taken at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
If that’s not enough, the City Council got a “don’t worry about it" memo when rumors started flying that the dirt movers had abandoned equipment and left the job site. Contractors started losing their mind when they were told to follow state specs instead of approved and adopted city specs.
I’m sure there is probably some ordinance or resolution that will be dusted off soon that shows that Engineering can’t do that.
If you don’t believe me about the contractors, ask them.
It has come to the point on the Christensen project that the City Council needs to intervene. Not that long ago on the Civic Center Commons project, the City Council did just that. The only difference between the Commons and Christensen is the design engineer was still actively in the loop on a daily basis. But on Christensen, he has been expelled, which is quite unusual for a $15 million dollar project.
Check Wyoming Statute 15-1-103, which clearly gives the council authority to intervene. The city engineer has supposedly resigned, the assistant city engineer is in way over his head, the managing engineer can't make engineering decisions, the project is way behind schedule, and the dirt contractor has walked off the job over disputes. There has never been a more perfect time for the council to get involved.
It’s not like the contractors are always right in this game of political chess. They want that government cheese and hope just enough is leaked to the City Council and media to get those checks cut. It’s all about the money, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
It looked like things might get better with the word that the city attorney was going to appoint a project manager. Now we learn the city attorney himself is going to manage the project. Never mind that the attorney knows absolutely nothing about road construction and engineering. That’s how we do it in Cheyenne.
So where does that leave the general population? Exactly where we are all the time: our taxpayer dollars being pissed away, safety playing second fiddle to profits or project cuts, and egos and power grabs leading the way to more residents’ deaths. I mean, what should the community expect? The traffic lights aren’t even in sync and we trust these people with millions of dollars of design changes after the City Council approved the construction bid.
One can only hope the voters are keeping tally. West Edge was mired in controversy created by the mayor and City Engineering. The east side park hasn’t even gotten off the ground. Municipal Court has endured location changes and massive overages. And now Christensen. At the center of it all lies one person: Mayor Marian Orr.
If I didn’t know any better, I would think this was some Mafioso stuff. Contractors and city staff alike are worried about retaliation. One person even said they didn’t want their name getting out because they didn’t want to wake up next to a horse’s head. It’s like they think they’ll get a Chicago overcoat. The concrete probably came from a quarry that may be owned by a future senator.
This shit show wouldn’t have happened if Laramie County had managed this project. Instead of getting built, Christensen is now circling the drain, one flush away from certain death.
Meanwhile, all three major county construction projects approved on the last sixth-penny ballot are on track to be completed before the end of the year.
The Archer Events Center was completed in July in time to host the fair. The courthouse is slated to be completed around October, and the jail should be finished before year’s end. Instead of reading about walk-offs and an attorney pretending to be an engineer, we’d be driving across Christensen right now!
In the words on one Cheyenne resident, “Last time I drove by there in late July there was a lot of dirt moved, but no real progress.” So like the hole downtown, but filled in. According to the (federal) application from June 2015, construction should have been completed by Q4 in 2017, as it was “shovel ready.”
Just like prom in Cheyenne, there’s a lot of excitement and buildup, but in the end there’s nothing to show for it. Then you’ve got to drive an extra 20 minutes out of the way to get home to mom and dad’s house.
Richard Johnson is a former City Council member from Ward 3 on Cheyenne’s east side.
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