West Franklin Street milling, repaving continues into Friday

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WEHT) — Milling and repaving West Franklin Street continued into Friday.

The city in 2023 is performing maintenance on some roads parallel to the Lloyd Expressway. It’s part of a plan extending from 9th Street to St. Joseph’s Avenue.

“It’ll make it look nicer, but — you know — again, we’re prepping for the bigger picture stuff and just the extra traffic that we expect on West Franklin starting next year,” Evansville city engineer Michael Labitzke said.

More drivers will have to use other routes to travel east and west when construction on the Lloyd begins in April.

Philip Ashenbremer owns Philthy Vintage Clothing which faces Franklin Street.

“I’m curious to see how the weekend is with the lack of parking out here, but I’m excited to have freshly paved streets in front of the shop,” Ashenbremer said.

He says he answered a survey within the last year asking how he felt about the traffic near his work.

Ashenbremer says there are possibly 10 or 15 projects on or near the Lloyd which would affect his surroundings.

“I let them know that Wabash Avenue should stay how it is,” Ashenbremer said. “I think it would help Franklin Street businesses just making it more convenient to get here.”

Ultimately, Ashenbremer says an increase of traffic on Franklin Street would not bother him.

“If construction on the Lloyd brings more traffic over here, I don’t mind it because more people will drive by the shop and see the shop,” Ashenbremer said. “If they haven’t seen it, they’l wonder what it is and maybe come in.”

The city says some roads running parallel to the Lloyd have been renovated by this point.

“We’re going to have to see our budget and our financial constraints for next year, but we are milling and overlaying Upper Mount Vernon,” Labitzke said. “We finished Clearmont earlier this year. We’re also going to work on South Barker, so there’s a lot of those parallel streets to the Lloyd that we expect to take higher volumes of traffic.”

Labitzke says a contract the city signed requires the Franklin Street renovations to be complete before the start of Fall Festival which begins on October 1.