Now that the weather is cooling down and the holidays are nearing, the Heritage 2000 project will be putting all major construction jobs on hold.

Construction crews and the municipal officers report that all revitalization efforts are running on schedule.

‘We haven’t missed more than six days because of weather but our type of work allows us to be flexible,’ said Monte Feifert, project manager for Vaughn Industries.

‘A lot of the messy stuff will be over soon as we gear down for the weather,’ said Mayor John Quinn.

Fiefert said that crews will work as long as weather permits but as soon as it starts to snow they will begin crews will have to change the type of work and will become more selective.

‘Once it starts to snow we will be doing strict electrical work, like installing lighting along side streets,’ Feifert said.

Most of the new street lamps have already been situated along Main street.

However, electrical crews will have to wait until after the holidays to install new traffic signals.

‘From Thanksgiving on streets will be open and no sidewalks will be torn up,’ Feifert said. ‘We will try to remain out of everyone’s way.’

However, Feifert said that they, as well as the municipal offices, received complaints about the unevenness of the sidewalks and the newly placed bricks. He said that the new sidewalks is only preliminary work, and will be taken care of by B ‘ J Concrete.

Mayor Quinn hopes to have no serious work during the holidays to ensure that merchants can have a good season.

Quinn would also like to see all that the trees are planted and the landscaping is completed along Main Street in November.

There has been a change in the original plans of the revitalization project concerning work around the Thurstin and E. Wooster intersection.

‘The Thurstin Ave. intersection has been taken off the agenda,’ said Lori Tretter, assistant to John Fawcett, Municipal Administrator.

Tretter said this is because they are already planning to widen E. Wooster street and it would be undoing their own work.

Construction for this project is expected to take place in 2004. Tretter said that they plan on carrying out the entire theme of ‘back to the old days,’ as described by Mayor Quinn, for this separate project.

As far as future projects, Mayor Quinn said that next year there will be serious parking problems when the construction crews start redoing parking lots behind buildings.

As of right now, Feifert is reporting that they are about 55-60 percent complete with the project.

‘I would like to be farther along, but I am comfortable with where we are now,’ Feifert said.

‘Things are in good shape now, but we will have to catch up in the spring,’ Quinn said. ‘We are behind in some quadrants by two or three weeks.’

Mayor Quinn still hopes to have the revitalization completed this July