Center Drive Reopens

Center Drive is now repaved, and it happened over a month earlier than originally planned.

The Shelly & Sands Company moved the project up on its project list after delays with an ongoing project. Center Drive closed to through traffic in March.

Now that repairs have been made, cars can head down the road once again. Mayor Jeff Tilton said it’s only a temporary fix. It hasn’t been repaired to have water drain outwards from the surface. Planning is now beginning to find a permanent solution to Center Drive’s problems.

“This is just a band aid. We still need to look at the future and what we’re going to do on center drive,” Tilton continued to discuss what will be done next. “We hope to get five to nine years out of that. But we’ve got to fix the way it drains and everything like that. We’re hoping to somehow have meetings with the residents and see what their thoughts are.”

Even though this project was completed ahead of schedule, questions remain if all the scheduled paving projects will be completed this year.

“We still have a lot more streets to pave this year by the end of October, but with all the rain we had this year, Shelly & Sands is behind, but they’re working very well with us and trying to get those done by October,” Tilton said.

He said the city is having the worst projects done first. This year, Zanesville has 16 miles, of the 138 miles of road in city limits, scheduled for repavement. Those projects total $1.7 million.