A long-anticipated project to reconstruct a portion of Route 443/Blakeslee Boulevard is underway.

The project began Monday and will rehabilitate the portion of roadway from the Carbon Plaza Mall in Mahoning Township to the Route 209/Thomas J. McCall Memorial Bridge in Lehighton.

H&K Group Inc. of Skippack is the general contractor on the $21 million project that is anticipated to be complete in September 2024.

Lane restrictions

Motorists can expect to experience some lane restrictions and changing traffic patterns on Route 443 between Ashtown Drive and Route 902/South Ninth Street.

Those will remain in effect over the next several weeks as there will be flaggers controlling traffic on that particular section of 443 while workers move equipment and set up a traffic pattern shift.

Lane restrictions will be in effect for much of the project.

Businesses react

While the project has its good points, businesses along the busy corridor will be affected.

Bill Klepeiss, general manager of Lehighton Ford Inc., said, “It’s going to be more disruptive than helpful to our businesses,” Klepeiss said. “I can’t imagine how anybody would be willing to spend this much money with little economic justification from our perspective and more importantly, without understanding the impact on our businesses, which they don’t care about.”

Klepeiss said it was presented as a safety concern. “I produced statistical analysis that the number of incidents are minimal in this area, to use that as a justification for what they wanted to do in this area is ridiculous; it doesn’t make sense.”

He pointed out that PennDOT allowed Wendy’s to open.

“That is a major traffic concern because they don’t even have enough room to handle the traffic there and the traffic is backed up in both directions. There are people parked on the shoulder of the road, so you created a potential incident and a risk to traffic flow, but nobody’s ever addressed the core root of the problem.”

Klepeiss said that the business will continue to function as is.

“Until we’re forced to, we’re not going to make any modifications to our property,” he said.

Fred and Donna Kemfort, managers of the Boulevard Drive-In Restaurant, know their business will be affected.

“It’s going to hurt a lot of businesses along this stretch,” Fred Kemfort said. “We really feel that it doesn’t have to be done; maybe they could have synchronized the lights a little better.”

Donna Kemfort agreed, and said they can only hope for the best.

“It’s going to have a really negative impact on every business along this strip because everybody’s going to avoid us,” Donna said.

“We’ve been fortunate as far as business because we have our takeout, which was already established before COVID had started, so that was a plus for us.

The restaurant has added DoorDash to provide delivery for people who don’t want to dine in. They are hoping that helps to keep business during the road construction.

“As far as dining in, it’s not what it was of course because we’re only at 50 percent, but people have been coming in, and for the most part everybody adheres to the precautions that we’ve set up for COVID and everything. A lot of them are thankful that we’re doing that, so I think that gives them a comfort that we’re doing everything we can to keep everybody safe.”

In the meantime, Donna said the business will do its best to accommodate its customers.

“I know last time when they were redoing the bridge, I used to put updates up on Facebook to give them a heads-up so that they could come at a time when (traffic is not so congested),” she said, adding that she will likely do so again.

The project

Work will include:

• Reconstructing 2.25 miles of roadway.

• Adding a center turn lane along the corridor.

• Adding left-turn lanes and traffic signal improvements at the Route 443 intersections with Mall Road/Mall Lane and East Penn Street/Mahoning Mountain Road designed to improve traffic flow and reduce crashes.

• Drainage improvements.

• Utility installation/relocation.

• New guard rail.

• Pavement markings and other miscellaneous construction.

• Rehabilitating the Route 443 bridge over Mahoning Creek.

• The Route 902/South Ninth Street bridge over Mahoning Creek will be replaced and the intersection of Route 902, and Route 443 will be realigned slightly to the east to make a “T” intersection.

For more information on projects occurring or being bid this year, those made possible by or accelerated by the state transportation funding plan, or those on the department’s four and 12-year plans, visit www.projects.penndot.gov.