City of Caddo Mills

Small cities have difficulty with their budgets as do most of us and when it comes time to fix streets the budget has to stretch as far as possible to affect the most people in a positive way. The City of Caddo Mills a few miles west of Greenville, Texas, had need of a little stretching. The city wanted to re-build two streets totaling a little over a mile in 2003. Now if you’re in Dallas, a mile of streets is just a cake walk but to Caddo Mills, population 1000 something, it was a major project. The Brannon Corporation was selected to perform the design of the streets partly because of their past experience with the city in other successful projects at their airport, sewer plant, and various utility installations. In addition, Brannon has worked for over 200 small cities and counties in Texas, New Mexico and other places. The project was made more difficult by the presence of high plasticity soils that can hold nearly their own weight in water and expand two or three inches under a roadway. The grades were very flat and the roadways had to connect to TexDOT highways on each end. “The high PI (plasticity) soils made lime stabilization and concrete pavement the most cost effective alternative,” said project engineer Jesse Whitten. “The longevity of the concrete more than made up for its higher initial cost.” Greenville Street and 1st Street are 2,260 lineal feet and 3,150 lineal feet respectively. Total cost of the work was $795,641 or $147.07 per lineal foot which includes demolition, excavation, lime stabilization, sidewalks, curbs and concrete pavement. Some inlets and drainage improvements are also included. Morrow Construction Company out of Lavon, Texas was the paving contractor.