KLB Construction Inc., of Lynnwood, Wash., has been awarded a $10 million contract to do earth-moving and grading work in the third construction job on the North Spokane Corridor project, which is also known as the north-south freeway.


The work is to begin early next month and last about a year, says Kirby Wallace, East Region project engineer for the Washington state Department of Transportation.


That segment of the multi-year project covers the most northern portion of what is projected eventually to be a 10.5-mile freeway connecting Interstate 90 near Freya Street, on the south, to U.S. 2 and U.S. 395 north of Spokane.


In the project, more than a one-mile stretch of the freeway route between Wandermere Road near U.S. 395 and U.S. 2 to the southeast will be graded. Nearly 2 million cubic yards of earth will be excavated and moved from that section to an area south of Hawthorne Road, between Market Street and Fairview Road, where it will be used in an embankment for the freeway.


KLB Construction was the low bidder among five companies that submitted bids, says Wallace.


In the first project in the corridor, the DOT spent $11.5 million to grade and install drainage facilities north from the intersection of Market and Hawthorne to U.S. 2, just east of Farwell Elementary School. That work was done in 2001.


The second construction project included the construction of four bridges over Farwell Road just south of U.S. 2. Kirby says that work, which was begun last spring, is 80 percent complete.


A request for bids for the fourth construction project, to be funded by the states 5-cent-a-gallon gas-tax increase that the Washington state Legislature approved in 2003, will be advertised this fall, says Mike Gribner, the DOTs project engineer for the North Spokane Corridor project. He says the project will include the construction of six more bridges: two where Shady Slope connects with U.S. 2, one over Parksmith near the intersection of Market and Hawthorne, one over Market, one over Fairview Road, and one over Perry Street between U.S. 395 and U.S. 2.


Gribner says that nickel tax funds have been approved for three additional construction projects beyond the five bridges, using the last of the $189 million previously approved for the corridor from nickel tax money.