While one long-running Chuckatuck project involving a sidewalk is drawing to an end, another is under way at a faster clip elsewhere in the village.

On Godwin Boulevard from Pembroke Lane to Kings Highway, the project that is almost complete has included a five-foot-wide concrete sidewalk, concrete curb and gutter, stormwater drainage pipe installation and “minor” asphalt pavement widening, according to Eric Nielsen, the city’s public works director.

Changing the drainage from ditch to pipe was necessary to install the sidewalk within the existing right of way, Nielsen stated.

“The last phase of the project will be to overlay the entire road with a surface layer of asphalt,” he added. “The asphalt work is scheduled for June. Most of the work was conducted using city staff and equipment.”

While this in-house city project began after its Capital Improvement Program funding first became available in fiscal 2007, according to Nielsen, the other, privately contracted project, providing a sidewalk along one side of Kings Highway, started a few weeks ago and should be finished by the middle of April, “if not sooner,” said city Public Utilities Director Al Moor, who is overseeing it.

This approximately 1,200-foot-long sidewalk will extend along Kings Highway and around the Chuckatuck Volunteer Fire Department building to a new Lone Star Lakes entrance at the Crittenden Road corner, Moor said.

The sidewalk, he said, will “give a little bit more pedestrian access to the park,” and mean pedestrians won’t have to walk down Kings Highway to get to it.

“When we shut that (old entrance) off, we felt it would be nice to continue that pedestrian access” without folks having skirt the highway and cross the bridge before Crittenden Road, he said.

When the new Lone Star Lakes entrance opens, the current one, past the G. Robert House Jr. Water Treatment Plant after turning left before the fire department, will close, Moor said.

Work is also under way on the next phase of an expansion of the water treatment plant, to do away with the discharge of wastewater into the Nansemond River, which has been occurring under permit.

The Lone Star Lakes entrance-sidewalk project will cost about $390,000, Moor said. The Godwin Boulevard sidewalk project was about $702,000, Nielsen stated.

City staff worked on the latter project over about 37 months in five spurts between July 2006 and last December, according to Nielsen. “Work on the project was accomplished in phases as funding became available and as resources were available,” he stated.