Spokane County has awarded two large road repaving contracts totaling $3 million to contractors here, with work expected to start this month on both projects, says senior engineer Bob Brueggeman.

Spokane-based Shamrock Paving Co. is the contractor on a $1.8 million project to repave Farwell Road between the North Spokane Corridor and Market Street. Work on the approximately one-mile section of Farwell is expected to be completed by November.

The project includes widening the road from two lanes to three lanes, with a center two-way left-turn lane, Brueggeman says. The contractor also will add bike lanes, and curbing and sidewalks on both sides of the street.

The project is being funded mostly through the federal surface transportation program, with some funding coming from the Washington state Transportation Improvement Board, he says. The project came in well under the engineer's estimate of $2.6 million.

Brueggeman says the road will be closed during the construction.

Mark Stiltz, a county utilities project manager, says the Farwell Road street work piggybacks on a $514,000 utilities project that shut down Farwell Road between the North Spokane Corridor and Market Street in late May.

Awarded to MDM Construction Inc., of Spokane, that project has included installing sewer lines to connect about 70 homes to the county sewer system from a community drain field, or septic system.

Stiltz estimates that work, paid for by the county utilities division, will end this week.

In addition to county road and utilities work, Stiltz says Avista Utilities, a division of Spokane's Avista Corp., installed new gas lines while the road was closed to traffic.

Separately, Inland Asphalt Co., of Spokane, has been named the contractor on a $1.2 million project to repave almost two miles of Argonne Road between Wellesley Avenue and Bigelow Gulch Road, Brueggeman says.

He anticipates that work will take up to a month and a half to complete, with the project paid for through the federal surface transportation program.

Inland Asphalt's project bid came in under the engineer's estimate of $1.6 million.