Albertville Engineer: All City Can Do Is Wait on I-94 Project

The Minnesota state government shutdown has been a damper across the board, and now Albertville will feel the ripple effect. 

The city, which has been hoping to get a new Interstate 94 interchange off the ground for much of the last five years, has been placed in a holding pattern until state workers are brought back online. 

City Engineer Adam Nafstad told Albertville City Council members that plans are ready for the Minnesota Department of Transportation's review. The problem is, with the shutdown, there is no one to review them. 

“Our consultants are in the process of revising the plans for MnDOT’s review [again],” city engineer Adam Nafstad shared at Tuesday night’s council meeting. “When the review will take place now though is unknown.”

Nafstad and the council knew this could be an issue if the state shutdown and worked hard to get the plans through their first review prior to shutdown.

“At this point we will just be ready to submit as soon as work at the state level resumes.”

Nafstad is confident the completion by the end of 2012 will not be affected.The current schedule for the I-94 project was to go through the approval process (early this year) and then start the bidding process this summer, with some preliminary work done on the roads involved as early as this fall. 

That could still happen, city leaders said, if the shutdown ends soon and the construction season is stretched a bit by good weather in late fall. 

The project has to go through two reviews through MNDOT, the first at the district level (St. Cloud) and the second at the central MNDOT (St. Paul) offices. The project is currently being reviewed at the district level and was ready to be moved to the state.