An almost three-year-old, $7.5 million drainage construction project on Midtown Mobile’s Florida Street just got nearly $500,000 more expensive as the Mobile City Council today approved a change order to pay a John G. Walton Construction for work on a 66-foot portion of a culvert that intersects railroad tracks passing through the area.

Money was necessary for the project because city-hired constructions crews had no choice but to work on a strict schedule and construction plan developed by railroad officials, which altered the manner in which they constructed the culvert, according to city officials.

City engineer Nick Amberger explained this particular phase of the project as “very complicated construction,” because the culvert had to be engineered and built before ground was broken. In other phases of the project, Amberger noted, crews were able to pour the culvert on site after ground had been broken.

“It was like Lego blocks pieced together,” Amberger said.

Construction workers had just 12 hours of an available 16-hour window to get their portion of the job done, according to Amberger. The remaining four hours were left, on the front end, for the railroad company to remove the tracks, and then, on the back end, to put the track back into working order.

Mayor Sam Jones backed Amberger up, saying when the railroads are involved with construction they essentially control every aspect of the project.

“The railroad determines how you do it, when you do it and where you do it,” Jones said referring to the construction process.

The $431,817 change order also covered the cost of work completed by railroad construction crews.

“We fully expect that number to be hopefully less,” Amberger said of the funds, some of which will come from the Seabreeze Road East drainage project, another City of Mobile drainage project.

During the railroad related construction, the entrance to Florida Street from Dauphin Street has been closed.

District 1 councilman Fred Richardson, the representative for the area where construction is occurring said progress comes at an expense sometimes.

“We’ve tried to make this as painless as possible. Unfortunately, the businesses aren’t going to see the improvement so much as neighborhoods like Japonica Street and the other surrounding cul-de-sacs,” Richardson said.

Richardson noted that the city had done its best to increase signage and hold meetings with business owners as often as they could.

City spokesperson Barbara Drummond echoed Richardson’s sentiment saying the administration originally intended to provide updates for Florida Street business owners every two weeks. While the city has missed a few of those updates Drummond said they’ve been in contact one way or another and feel they’ve improved communications since some business owners filed a lawsuit in early 2008.

When Lagniappe originally reported on complications stemming form the Florida Street drainage project in October 2008, all of the handful of business owners we talked to had experienced financial hardship as a result of the thoroughfare being closed.

Julie Wheat said business at her candy and bakeshop is still almost non-existent when the road is closed.

“They’ve been forced to do this (improve signage and communication with business owners), or else they’d look really bad,” Wheat said. “It seems like they’re moving along faster and communicating better, but the damage is already done. I’m not even doing Christmas this year.”

City officials said Florida Street will re-open around November 14 in order to help businesses during the holiday season, but another closure is due for the beginning of 2010 in order to fix a sewer pipe damaged last month.

Some of the true benefit of the prolonged project will be seen, Amberger said, when a junction box is built just north of where construction crews are working now.