MN 60 to open Friday

• Minnesota 60 Roundabout

Julie Buntjer/Daily Globe A vehicle traverses the new roundabout at the southeast beltline of Worthington.

Talk about it

WORTHINGTON — Residents living along Nobles County 4, 5 and 57 will begin to see their rural roads return to some semblance of normal traffic levels on Friday, when the Minnesota Department of Transportation lifts the 59/60 detour that has been in place for much of the past two years.

MnDOT District 7 project engineer Bob Williams said the biggest chunk of the detour will be lifted at the end of this week. That means northbound Minnesota 60 travelers will be able to use the newly expanded four-lane highway all the way from Bigelow to Worthington’s southeast beltline, and those planning a southbound journey can access Minnesota 60 from multiple points on the south side of town.

With work to continue for the next three weeks near the new railroad bridge, Williams said traffic will be detoured at the roundabout, taking drivers along CSAH 35 to the east, and then Nobles County 5 to the north and Nobles County 33 to the west to meet up with the existing highway.

Crews were already out on Monday removing some of the detour signage and getting the area ready for vehicle traffic, and Williams said a meeting between MnDOT and contractors was planned for today.

The next couple of days will be spent getting the new permanent signs in place, while the city completes the street lighting project along Minnesota 60 between Nobles Street and the roundabout.

The much-anticipated opening of the new four-lane highway gives cause for celebration, and businesses that have been a challenge to reach for much of the past two years are excited to welcome people back to their doors.

Eric Joens, district manager for Schaap Sanitation, said foot traffic at the recycling facility dropped dramatically because of the challenges in getting to the center. He’s pleased with the new highway and the added safety features it offers.

“We’re very excited for all of the safety enhancements it provides for our customers,” Joens said, adding that new turn lanes will make it safe for people to access the recycling center.

People who perhaps haven’t ventured out to Schaap during the road construction project will be in for quite a surprise.

“We’ve spent nearly a half million dollars improving our site so people can bring compost and everything out to our site,” he said. “It’s a very exciting time to have a new office facility. Our customers, when they come out to do business with recycling, they can enter into a different entrance. They can come on a clean, hard surface road and not have to worry about trucks and big equipment moving around.”

Within the last month, Joens said he’s started to see more people trickle in to the recycling center as they find their way out of town on the highway.

Now, with the new highway open, he said, “We’ll get back to business as usual.”

“It’s been a long couple years and it’s been difficult for freight trucks coming in and out to negotiate through construction,” Joens said. “It was very difficult to give directions.”

Giving directions became rather easy for Chuck Nystrom, owner of Ocheda Orchard. For the past two years, he’s simply had to tell people to follow the detour route. Come Friday, he won’t have the extra traffic passing right in front of his orchard.

“It’s kind of a mixed feeling,” he said. “I think we actually had more people stop this year than last year. The apple crop was so decimated this year that we had people from Michigan, Iowa and Nebraska stop — they just didn’t have apples in their neighborhood.”

While Ocheda Orchard benefitted from the added traffic, Nystrom said he also noticed fewer local people braving the detour to reach the orchard.

“People commented from Worthington that they just didn’t like the traffic or fighting the detour,” he said. “We did suffer a little on the local traffic, but we probably made up for it in the new customers.

“I would guess anybody that’s normally travelling the Highway 60 route, they discovered us because of the detour and they may stop in future years,” he added.

Now, with Minnesota 60 reopening, Nystrom will once again have to rely on promotional tools to lure travelers to the orchard. He has a sign on U.S. 59, and said the rest area near the 59/60 connection north of Bigelow helped direct people to his business.

The detour on CSAH 4 and 5 had caused a few issues during the two years traffic was rerouted. A number of crashes occurred on a curve just south of Grandpa’s Fun Farm, and a spring thaw — coupled with the large number of overweight limit trucks — caused severe destruction to the detour road.

“We were really thankful that we did not have any accidents at our driveway,” said Nystrom, adding that a request to MnDOT to add signage alerting drivers to slower traffic seemed to help. “We just didn’t have anything that I would call a close call.”

Daily Globe Reporter Julie Buntjer may be reached at 376-7330.

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