WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Despite appearances, work on a Main Street bridge replacement has not been suspended or fallen behind schedule, a town official confirmed on Monday.

 

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation is replacing the span that carries Main Street (Route 2) traffic over the Green River on the east side of town.

 

At the outset, MassDOT said the replacement project would go into 2026.

 

With active construction at the site slowed in recent weeks, some have speculated that the project has been paused.

 

On Monday, Town Manager Robert Menicocci explained why there is no road work at the moment.

 

"Right now the project is in the phase where each utility has 90 days to complete their work related to relocating utilities, and then work on the other lane will resume," Menicocci wrote in an email to iBerkshires.com.

 

Menicocci said there are four different utilities moving their infrastructure at the site.

 

This weekend, a social media post hypothesized that Northern Construction, the general contractor on the bridge project, had "taken out" its building materials from the site.

 

The post may have been referring to the fact that material was moved from one section of a lot owned by the Williamstown Fire District to another part of the district's parcel.

 

At the outset of the bridge project, the district entered into an agreement with Northern to use part of its parcel on the north side of Main Street, just east of the bridge to store materials.

 

This summer, with work planned to get underway prepping the site for a new fire station, the district asked Northern to relocate its material to a back corner of the same property, an area that happens to be less visible from the road.