Mountain Street borders the college campus to the south from Verdugo Road to the Glendale (2) Freeway.
The college's $24.7-million parking structure, which is under construction, drives the need for the street to be widened. The project includes adding two left-turn lanes into the campus, eastbound off of Mountain, city of Glendale engineer Roubik Golanian said.
Along with the two new left-turn lanes, workers will add a right-turn lane headed west on Mountain that will lead traffic directly into the campus, said Larry Serot, the college's executive vice president of administrative services.
The trustees initially approved paying the city $90,000 in engineering costs and $820,000 in construction costs to finance the street-widening project in December 2004. The city notified the college last week that the original $910,000 had increased to about $1.67 million, Serot said.
The expanding scope of the project and rising construction costs contributed to the soaring price tag, Golanian said.
The street-widening construction is slated to begin in mid-May, Golanian said. The city plans to keep open at least one lane in each direction during the more than three months of construction, he said.
"Original estimated cost was done three years ago and that was only for a partial scope of work," he said.
At first the city planned to expand the south side of Mountain Street. But the project expanded to rehabilitate the entire street from gutter to gutter, he said.
"This way we'll have a uniform, consistent looking pavement," he said.
But reaching for a uniform look meant cutting into the hillside bordering Mountain Street to the south, lumping on additional construction — such as a retaining wall to the south of Mountain Street.
