Portland's Northwest Newberry Road is expected to reopen in mid-April after it was forced to close following a January 2017 snowstorm.
A section of the West Hills road above Highway 30 was damaged by a landslide from melted snow.
Newberry Road's reopening will be helpful for a growing number of commuters, said Mike Pullen of Multnomah County's Communications Office.
"Northwest Newberry Road, it’s a rural road, but we have sort of a population in the region where you have the city of Portland on one end of the road and on the other side of the hill you have Washington County," Pullen said. "So a lot of these commuters have started to use these West Hills roads to get to work and get home in the evening."
The repair was delayed for so long because the county was waiting on federal disaster funds, Pullen said. That money will pay for most of the estimated $1.8 million project, he said.
The road's repair will be an important detour for another construction project in the summer, Pullen said.
"In the summer of 2019 we'll be closing Cornelius Pass Road for 13 weeks to do a number of safety improvements," he said. "We'll be making Newberry one of the major detour routes."
That detour will take place around July to October, Pullen said.
Northwest Newberry Road's repair includes a retaining wall made of "rock-filled steel baskets," Pullen said, instead of a more modern looking concrete retaining wall. This will give the rural road a more natural look, he said.
"Eventually plants will grow into the wall and it'll look like a green wall," he said.
The county expects to announce a date for opening the road in the coming weeks.
