By SHELLEY TERRY - Staff Writer - sterry@starbeacon.com
ASHTABULA — It’s official: Goodwill Drive in the Ashtabula Harbor reopened Wednesday after six months of renovations.
Although it was slow going, the brick street finally is finished, and the Goodwill Industries’ Harbor store is planning a grand reopening, a store official said.
“Goodwill Drive is once again easily accessible, and Goodwill Industries (store) is accessible for shoppers and donators,” said Nicole Steele, marketing and retail director. “It is the hopes of (the) Goodwill staff that the store revenue will begin to increase now that the street is open.”
The grand reopening of the Goodwill Industries is 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday through next Wednesday at the Harbor location on Goodwill Drive.
The $728,000 Goodwill Drive street project consisted of numerous aesthetic and architectural elements, including cleaning the bricks, installing drainage pipes on both sides of the street and a new sidewalk. The work on the 112-year-old brick street began last May, according to city officials.
A company called LCI removed all of Goodwill Drive’s bricks, dug down 24 inches and discovered unstable soil. That delayed the project because workers then had to mix stone, gravel and dry concrete to stabilize the soil, City Manager Anthony Cantagallo said.
The Ohio Department of Transportation provided funding for the project, which covered the engineering, plus the brick and road work.
Throughout construction, Goodwill Industries remained open, but it wasn’t always particularly easy getting in there. Now that the street is done, Steele hopes customers will come in and check out the deals, in time for the holidays.
The Harbor Goodwill store is one of seven stores that Goodwill Industries of Ashtabula operates to support its mission.
