Ashland reaches settlement for Sixth Street West project

Another party involved in the botched Sixth Street West reconstruction project from 2016 has reached a settlement with the City of Ashland.

Coleman Engineering will pay the city $125,000.City officials have said the testing and inspection firm was partially responsible for the failures in the $5.6 million project.

Residents long have complained that almost as soon as the rebuild was complete, the road developed humps and swales and pavement crumbled, making driving it almost as painful as it was before the work.In December 2022 Mayor Matthew MacKenzie called the result “not the road we wanted.”

The city filed suit about three years later.

Coleman is the second party the city involved in the original construction to settle. In 2022, Ashland officials reached a settlement with James Peterson Sons. But instead of paying the full cost of reconstruction estimated by the city to be roughly $4 million, Peterson agreed to pay $573,500 to cover the repairs of the road from Ellis Avenue to Sanborn Avenue.

As part of the project, crew members milled roughly two inches of the existing pavement, filled in areas that settled and then repaved the road.