City to fix Chestnut Street ‘infrastructure failure’ by November

The city of Colorado Springs announced Tuesday evening it hopes to fix the “infrastructure failure” on Chestnut Street by November.

In August, heavy rains caused a culvert underneath Chestnut Street to fail. It created a sinkhole that shut down the street. Since then, traffic in the area has been rerouted. People in the area called the sinkhole an inconvenience and an eyesore.

At an open house on Tuesday, the project manager met with residents to review finalized designs. The new designs include rerouting Sinton Trail underneath the bridge. The city has finalized a deal with an outside contractor.

Work is scheduled to finish in November, but that deadline is weather-dependent. Project manager Alex Pellegrino said workers hope to be done sooner than November, but it could take longer.

Pellegrino said the project has taken a long time to complete because the problem sprung up unexpectedly. Pellegrino said the city planned to replace the bridge in 2019. Engineers work on a design one year ahead of the project. However, when the sinkhole opened up in August, Pellegrino said the city had to push up funding the project and raced complete a design for the bridge in six months. He said while residents may feel its taken a long time, the project has actually moved quickly.