Construction of a new $ 71.7M land entry point at the Maine-Canada border: CEG

The US General Services Administration (GSA) has officially launched a $ 71.7 million Land Port of Entry (LPOE) project at the international border crossing between Madawaska, Maine, and Edmundston, New Brunswick in Canada.

Entrepreneurs J&J Inc., from North Billerica, Mass., had already started preparatory work on the site of the new building where people enter the United States through a Customs and Border Protection (CPB) checkpoint.

However, the work officially kicked off at the Madawaska Multipurpose Center on September 9, bringing together regional dignitaries from the GSA and CBP, representatives of the Maine Congress delegation and local officials to hear the updates. day on the project so far.

The LPOE, along with the neighboring $ 97 million Madawaska / Edmundston International Bridge over the Saint John River project, represents not only a massive infrastructure upgrade in the city of Maine, but a renewed link between the community and Edmundston – divided for more than a year by pandemic restrictions on international travel.

Work on the bridge also began earlier this summer and is being erected by Reed & Reed Inc., a Woolwich, Maine specialist in bridge building.

“Days like this, where we can bring everyone together again for this mutual benefit [are] really special, ”said CBP Field Operations Office Executive Assistant Commissioner William Ferrara at the inauguration.

The two projects will be among the largest construction companies in Madawaska for decades, the Valley Times reported. The old international bridge, for example, was built exactly 100 years ago and has been posted with a weight limit of only 5 tons since 2017. It is in urgent need of replacement.

The port of entry will be significantly expanded from current Madawaska facilities, Ferrara said, and with the new building, technology updates and expansion of CBP security capabilities will be added, according to the Valley Times. Additionally, the GSA noted in a press release that the LPOE is designed to accommodate non-intrusive inspection equipment.

Not only will the larger facility potentially create more jobs for CBP, but Madawaska City Manager Gary Picard told the newspaper the improved border crossing will likely create more maintenance work, with “buildings bigger to heat, bigger aisles to plow ”.

Already, the Madawaska LPOE processes 430,000 private southbound vehicles per year, more than 115 times the city’s total population. But municipal leaders in Edmundston and Madawaska have called for additions to the project to promote even more international travel and trade flows between the United States and Canada.

Part of it was to convince the Maine Department of Transportation (MaineDOT) widen the bridge to accommodate a pedestrian and recreational vehicle lane.

The entry point, meanwhile, will include a large work of art, which will be visible from the main street of Madawaska, and which Picard says will be an attraction for visitors. While the GSA already requires half a percentage of its project budgets to be spent on art, Picard has worked directly with the federal government to ensure the entry point matches the vision set out in the plan. of revitalization of downtown Madawaska, which has lasted for a decade.

“It’s hard to put into words the amount of work it took to get there,” he told the local Madawaska newspaper. “It took a lot of collaboration.

As of September 10, GSA spokesman Paul Hugues was unsure of the immediate next step in building the LPOE, several news outlets in Maine reported, but the federal agency said on its website. that she estimated that both projects would be completed by the end of 2023..

The construction schedule for the new LPOE is tied to the MaineDOT International Bridge Project and the New Brunswick Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (NBDTI). The GSA has said it is committed to ensuring the port of entry is operational when the bridge is completed.

The current land port will remain open throughout construction, according to the GSA website.

The federal and state governments, along with their counterparts in Canada, have been planning bridge and land port improvements since at least 2009, the GSA noted.

Besides CBP and GSA, other US tenant agencies operating at LPOE will be the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).