Three officials from that Southern Tier city visited the village Thursday morning to relate their experiences in dealing with a disruptive street project and how they worked to lessen the impact on tourist, residents, employees and businesses.

With only six weeks left to the September 3 target date for the start of the village's Main Street reconstruction project, local officials are beginning to address the potential impact it could have for residences and businesses.

The project includes not just the rehabilitation of the road and curb, but also sewer and water line repairs and upgrades that are being undertaken at the same time in an effort to avoid having to dig up the street after it has been rebuilt. Clancy said some of the sanitary sewer main running under Main Street and most of the storm sewer lines will be replaced along with water mains, fire hydrants and valves.

The road surface will be milled at the start of the project to remove between three to eight inches of asphalt so that there is a full six inches or curbing visible. Soft spots in the road base will be dug down 18 inches and a new base put down before resurfacing.

There will be detours, one-way traffic, no parking and closed streets as work progress from River Street to Pine Boulevard through the downtown business district. Businesspeople and residents along the route will likely experience delays, congestion and difficulty as they come and go while the project is underway.

Businesses which depend on deliveries through their Main Street entrances may be in line for some headaches.

"We're going to try to maintain traffic on Main Street," said village DPW coordinator Brian Clancy. "There may be some cases where we might have to go to one-way traffic. In some cases with the sewer work we may have to shut down the street for a day or two."

According to Clancy, they will keep the sidewalk open, but sections of it will have to close periodically when new sewer line laterals are installed.

At the close of the work day, the construction sites along the route will be closed up and traffic will be restored for the night, Clancy said. Construction will restart each day at 7 a.m.

In Corning, the planning process started a year-and-a-half in advance, but began in earnest six months out, said Marty Muggleton, President of the Greater Corning Area Chamber of Commerce.

According to Nancy DeLancey, Director of Community Development for Corning Enterprises, a division of Corning Inc., they put together a whole marketing plan for the project and created Big Dig Survivor Packs.

"We tried to keep everything positive and upbeat," she said.

DPW. Coordinator Brian Clancy described the plan's timeframe as aggressive with November 1 set for 95 percent completion of the job.

"We don't have a big window of opportunity to get it done, said village mayor Carol Waller.

Muggleton said in corning that they shrank their project from seven months to 14 weeks and included a penalty clause in the agreement with the contractor, It called for a penalty of $1,000 per day for every day they were late, but also paid $1,000 for every day early the work was completed.

Parking is a perennial problem in Corning also and officials came up with a solution that will likely remain in place even though the project was recently completed.

Employee parking was moved to the outskirts of the city and the parking lots near Market Street were used for visitor and customer parking.

"It appears to me you'll need to park employees way out. You're going to need every space you have," said Louise McIntosh, Coordinator of Facilities for the Corning Intown District Management Association. "You may want to look at shuttling employees."

McIntosh explained that Corning has a two-hour limit on parking on Market Street and that motorists can't simply move to a new location on the street periodically to avoid tickets. The city is divided into different zones and people must park in a different zones or risk getting a ticket.

Parking enforcement officers, which were increased during the project, use a hand-held computer to track a car's plate number, location and time.

She said there were a lot of complaints, but that the plan was largely self-policing through peer pressure exerted by other merchants and businesses people to help insure compliance.

"Communication is the key to it all," she said.

Corning held three public meetings to explain to people what the project entailed and gave them a chance to question officials about the project. they also produced , at times, daily updates about the work schedule for the coming days as the project progressed and occasionally plans changed.

Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Polly Renckens said she had not yet communicated the potential impacts of the project to Main Street merchants. "We're all going to affected. We really need to plan for this to minimize problems.

The village trolley system shifts from seven-day-a-week operation to weekends only the same day the work begins, but Waller said she would like to see the system running free -of-charge to help shuffle visitors and employees from the trolley lots into downtown. One problem is that almost all of the trolley drivers are also school bus drivers and they begin work again in September.

Waller said the village should contact local churches which may have parking lots that could be used and also Bassett Hospital.

Renckens said that fall is a "very, very crucial" time for tourists, but that there is never a good time for a project like this one. "I like to be prepared as possible. If that means scrambling, then let's get going," she said.

Monday night the board accepted the low bid $688,000 from F.P.Kane Construction of Endicott, N.Y., for the street project. The only other bid, from Hanna Construction of Barneveld, N.Y., was in the amount of $871, 998.