Highway 9 will be ripped up for three months this summer near Gundersen Clinic

Expect some slight delays starting in July when you drive on Highway 9 between Montgomery Street and Old Stage Road in Decorah.

The Iowa Department of Transportation has awarded a contract worth $526,357.19 to Wicks Construction of Decorah to replace the decking on the Highway 9 bridge over Trout Run Creek.

Iowa DOT District 2 construction engineer Ron Loecher tells decorahnews.com the project is scheduled to start July 10th.  Crews will do the work in stages, closing two lanes at a time and funneling traffic onto the other two lanes (one westbound, one eastbound).  The two northernmost lanes of the four-lane highway will be closed first.  When those lanes are finished, the process will be reversed.  Crews will grind off existing the layer of pavement and lay down a thin 2-inch layer of pavement.

Loecher says the project is scheduled to last three months.  That means the work will continue into October.

The pavement has been patched previously in several locations

Shoulders on Highway 9 will be strengthened in order to sustain the temporary traffic funneled into one lane in each direction