By summers end, Nichols Lane in front of Forest Grove High will connect to Bonnie Lane and become a reduced-speed zone

The loud hum of heavy equipment has become the summer soundtrack for Forest Grove High School.

When school starts on Sept. 5, the 1,990-student campus will sport a brand-new kitchen and cafeteria, a second gymnasium, an expanded weight room, locker rooms and an improved entryway with new doors.

And along with all the changes, part of a $65.3 million bond levy approved by voters in 2010, the Forest Grove community will get another gift: a new public street.

Nichols Lane, a private road often blocked off by a metal gate on the west end of the high school parking lot near Brooke Street, will connect to Bonnie Lane and extend all the way to the east to meet up with Sunset Drive.

The result, said Derek Robbins, a civil engineer with the city of Forest Grove, will be a "standard collector street" on which cars can travel unimpeded from west to east. Motorists will need to be mindful, however, of a 20-mile-per-hour speed zone, which will be in effect at all times.

In the trenches

"We're in the trenches getting it done," said Cheryl Pin, FGHS project manager for Portland-based Cornerstone Management Group, hired by the Forest Grove School District to handle the construction work. The street project, she said, “will be done before school starts."

Cost for the Nichols Lane extension, borne by the district as part of a city-ordered caveat for the bond measure, is about $800,000, Pin noted.

Starting Monday, Pin’s project crew entered the fifth week of a 10-week time frame for completion of the projects — a tight deadline, acknowledged school district communications director Connie Potter. “It’s a pretty ambitious schedule, but we’re on track.”

By Aug. 1, residents will notice “big changes” to Nichols Lane, alterations that will be “quite significant,” said Pin.

The gate on the campus’s west side will go away, she said, and Nichols will “curve around and key into Bonnie Lane” to help keep traffic speeds down.

Little objection

Several neighborhood meetings were held last spring to answer questions from residents about the proposed street project and other aspects of the FGHS remodel, said Robbins. He added he’d heard little objection to the plans.

“People liked the idea of the open gate,” Robbins said. “We initially thought the neighbors would want Nichols to stay private, but they preferred to have it open, because they’ll use it.”

The revamp of Nichols Lane evolved from a previous proposal by the city to create an east-to-west arterial in the vicinity of Forest Grove High, Robbins noted.

“The Nichols Lane through-street concept was identified early on in traffic planning as an important access need in the city,” he said.

Past development of the FGHS campus — in particular, the parking lot configuration and addition of the gate — delayed the east-west circulation concept, Robbins noted. So the city’s traffic focus “shifted to the north” to settle on the extension of Hartford Drive to Brooke Street, he said.

The latest plan was based on the city’s adopted 2007 transportation study and city-approved FGHS development plans, according to Robbins.