Phase 2 of the Blue Mile streetscape project, estimated to cost roughly $10 million, will continue up South Main Street from in front of Renasant Bank north of the Fair Road intersection to Grady Street at Statesboro-Bulloch County Library. But don’t expect actual construction to begin now – or in the next 12 months. Officials and engineers say the city will probably need that year just to acquire the necessary right of way. Like Phase 1 of the project, Phase 2 will include sidewalks with brick paver-look accents and driveways, street lamps, a bus stop shelter, drainage improvements and street resurfacing, in this case about 0.4 mile. This phase also requires relocating utilities, especially to eliminate power poles along South Main Street and reduce the number of powerlines crossing it. Some traffic signals are to be replaced. But unlike Phase 1, which was completed in the first months of 2024 at reportedly less than its then-budgeted $5.4 million, Phase 2 will pass through an area where the right of way of this segment of U.S. Highway 301/25 is only 60 feet wide, but 80 feet is needed, said one engineer with a long-term knowledge of the project. Phase 1, from Tillman Road near the original Georgia Southern University entrance north to the Fair Road Intersection, required virtually no additional right of way, since it ran along a state right of way already 100 feet wide. But the city did end up compensating a number of businesses for relocating signs out of the right of…
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