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Drivers on a main Grand Coulee street will notice a major maintenance effort this year, as Spokane Way and other streets receive a pavement treatment.

Grand Coulee has hired Gray & Osborne as its engineering firm to oversee a pavement maintenance project expected to be done sometime this year.

Public works Director Dennis Francis said the chip-sealing project will begin at SR-174, and come down Spokane Way to the Teepee Restaurant, then start again on the other side of Midway Avenue, up Second Street to B Street. Some small “dig outs” are also included in the project, Francis stated.

City Clerk Lorna Pearce said that a date hasn’t been set for the work but that it will be done sometime this year.

Gray & Osborne had been helpful in preparing advance materials that took the city through the grant application process, and has done several engineering projects in Grand Coulee in recent years.

The city has received a $181,071 grant from the Department of Transportation’s Transportation Improvement Board (TIB), for a major chip sealing project.

“We are trying to coordinate with TIB work planned at Elmer City so there would be just one setup fee,” Pearce stated.

Elmer City opened its bid for a $68,000 chip seal project on the Lower River Road last week, but city officials stated that bids came in well over the grant amount.

“We have sent the bids to the Transportation Improvement Board to see what they want do,” public works Director Jimmer Tillman stated.