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Friday, September 26

I-10 Huebner: another overnight closure ahead

Bridge builders working for Webber Construction have plans to close the main lanes of I-10 at UTSA boulevard overnight Monday and Tuesday nights, allowing them to form and pour the bridge deck for what will be the UTSA Boulevard east-to-west turnaround.

Work will begin at 8 o'clock each night, and the highway will reopen by 5 a.m. the next morning. Traffic will use the frontage roads - in both directions - to reach its destination. Police officers will be on hand to ensure the smoothest traffic flow possible at UTSA Boulevard.

These closures represent the nearing completion of this long-awaited intersection improvement, which will allow eastbound traffic to reverse course and access the growing development along the westbound access road of I-10 between UTSA Boulevard and Loop 1604.

The next big change on the I-10 project, however, is currently scheduled for the night of October 10 - weather permitting to get all the work slated to be done between now and then - when traffic over DeZavala Road will be moved from the westbound side of I-10 over onto the nearly finished eastbound side. Webber Construction has been working on the eastbound overpass at DeZavala since mid-summer, totally reconstructing the bridge to add capacity and to raise the bridge somewhat, allowing greater clearance space for traffic on DeZavala Road itself.

The traffic switch marks the end of the first of two back-to-back six-month milestones to reconstruct the I-10 overpass at DeZavala. It would also mean Webber finished the first milestone two full months sooner than projected - a welcome development for those who've been experiencing the project since early 2012. Completion of the second milestone (which is the reconstruction of the westbound overpass bridge at DeZavala) will essentially be the end off the project at large; crews are working hard at all other areas of the project to wrap things up.

Project managers anticipate the total completion of this project for summer 2015.

This project was initially a 30-month project, beginning early 2012 and set to wrap up mid-2014. That timeline was derailed in November 2012 when the initial contractor, Ballenger Construction, filed for bankruptcy and defaulted on the project. Webber Construction took over in the spring of 2013 and needed almost six full months to sort through what had already been one and what had been left undone by Ballenger. The bonding company, Liberty Mutual, is responsible for any assessed charges for late delivery on the project.