Watsonville, California-based Granite Construction won a $55 million contract to widen a section of Grant Road in Tucson, Arizona, the contractor announced Jan. 31.
The project involves widening Grant Road to provide six through lanes and a median with left turn lane pockets, according to Granite.
It also includes new curbs, sidewalks, landscaping, traffic signals, streetlights and a detention pond. Subterranean work will include a water main replacement, sewer main additions, cross roadway box culverts and storm drains as well as a large 96" diameter culvert to mitigate storm runoff.
Granite will expand approximately 1.5 miles of the roadway, a major surface street thoroughfare in Tucson, from Palo Verde Boulevard to Venice Place. The job is part of Phase 3 and 4 of the larger Grant Road Improvement Project that has been ongoing since at least 2013, when its first phase was completed.
That project, in turn, is part of Pima County’s $2.1 billion Regional Transportation Authority’s 20-year plan, which is funding the job.
While Granite’s current portion on the project is a relatively modest amount, it aligns with the contractor’s updated strategy of targeting smaller, more manageable contracts that have shorter timelines — and thus are easier to budget and estimate — than billion-dollar mega projects.
It also fits into Granite’s “home market” strategy targeting jobs in regions where it also operates aggregate and road material facilities. The firm’s nearby Swan Plant facility will provide 36,000 tons of hot-mix asphalt for the project, deliver 40,000 tons of aggregate base course and source 32,500 pounds of stormwater and sewer bedding and shading sand.
“In addition to serving as an anchor project to the Arizona region and local workforce, the project also compliments our vertically integrated business with a need for aggregates and asphalt on the project,” said Todd Hill, Granite’s vice president of regional operations, in the release.
Granite expects to begin work in in April 2024 and finish the job by December 2026.
