MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The City of Morgantown is ready to move forward with the 2025 Street Improvement Project, which includes plans to start repaving a heavily used road near downtown by the end of the year.
The Morgantown City Council unanimously approved a bid contract with Parrotta Paving to pave approximately six miles of road for approximately $803,000, with a separate contract awarded for the reconstruction of North High Street at a value of approximately $152,000. Director of Engineering and Public Works for the City of Morgantown Damien Davis presented details on the paving projects to the council during their regular meeting Tuesday, which included a goal to start work on North High Street within the next month.
“As part of that, we’re doing about 6 miles of roadway, likely roads probably won’t get started until the spring, but we are going to work with the contractor, talk to them depending on the weather, and see if we can get started on North High Street immediately,” said Davis. “That would be our main priority.”
According to Davis, the reconstruction of North High Street will include a complete replacement of the predominantly brick-layered piece of road that is heavily used during the regular school year for West Virginia University students. Work on the project will move forward after delays related to the replacement of water and sewer lines by the Morgantown Utility Board as well as the rebuilding of an underground steam tunnel by WVU contractors. With streetscape improvements included in the project, Davis hopes to have contractors starting work within the next few weeks.
“We’re trying to get that done this season depending on the weather,” said Davis. “That road’s in pretty rough shape, and we’ve been kind of kicking it down the road, as all the utilities have slowly gotten their things replaced, and WVU got their steam lines and their steam tunnel fixed, and so now finally everybody else is done with their projects, and we can get started with ours.”
The remaining repavements scheduled as part of the six-mile 2025 Street Improvement Project will include focused areas in neighborhoods across the seven wards within the City of Morgantown. This includes repavements of Pennsylvania Avenue and Euclid Avenue in the South Park and Greenmont neighborhoods, respectively, as well as the repavement of Eastland Avenue and Gibbons Street, a few minutes’ walk away from Mylan Puskar Stadium. With the project reportedly going below budget despite plans to repave Hart Field Road by the Morgantown Municipal Airport and roads of residential complexes north of Van Voorhis Road, Davis added that leftover funds will be used to support ADA-approved sidewalk improvements in 2026.
“This came in a little under budget, we anticipated a little more, so we’re going to take the rest of this money and put this into an ADA project that we’ve been kind of kicking around, ” said Davis.
With the expectation that the North High Street reconstruction and the other repavements that encompass the around six miles of roadway that will be addressed will be complete by no later than mid-2026, Davis does project the 2026 paving plans to be affected as part of the work. Despite that, ADA-compliant pedestrian improvements on those roads are expected to be done in separate projects, which are expected to be close to completion by the time the new paving improvement list is approved by the council next year.
“This will be all paving, and we’ll come back in and do ADA ramps at a separate time,” said Davis. “It’s a separate project, so those two contractors aren’t bumping into each other, and we’re going to try to do that again next year as well.”