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Long-awaited road work outside Lums Pond State Park starts in March

via Google Maps
The project will connect Denny Road and Howell School Road across Rt. 896 in Bear. The current interchange is pictured at center, with Lums Pond State Park at lower right.

A Middletown contractor will spend the next two years upgrading a dangerous intersection in Bear and adding a bike and pedestrian path outside Lums Pond State Park.

DelDOT gave an $8.3 million contract to Mumford & Miller for the project. It'll connect Howell School Road and Denny Road across Route 896 in Bear.

Project manager Rich Palmer says right now, there's a jog between the two.

"And so because of that, there's a lot of accident history due to people having to make sort of a U-turn on 896 to get to where they want to go," he says. Those destinations could include the state park or neighboring subdivisions.

 

Palmer says the need for the project dates to when those houses were built, more than 20 years ago. The upcoming work will also include a roundabout on Howell School Road, at the entrance to the Caravel Woods subdivision cross from the state park.

Palmer says workers will also remove a ditch along one side of the road and relocate utility poles to create a 10-foot-wide mixed-use bike and pedestrian path.

"Right now it's a very narrow road with high-speed traffic," he says. "But it also goes right into the entrance to Lums Pond. There's a lot of bicycle traffic."

Mumford & Miller will do the work over the next two years, starting in early March. Palmer says they'll coordinate with local stakeholders on any detours or delays.

The Middletown company also just got a $31.7-million DelDOT contract to work on the I-95 and Route 141 interchange in New Castle. They were the low bidder on the Lums Pond-area project, coming in under state engineers' estimate.

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