POULSBO — Work at the intersection of Finn Hill Road and Olhava’s “A” Street is as complete as it’s going to be for at least a couple more months, those in charge of the project said this week.

Since the summer, Scarsella Brothers, Inc. has been doing work near the on-ramp of Finn Hill and State Route 3. The project is adding the intersection of Finn and “A” Street, two salmon-friendly culverts, sidewalks and gutters.

The proposed “A” street leads to the 216-acre Olhava site’s business park area College Marketplace.

Construction work is listed by the Kitsap County Open Line as having a completion date of January 2004 but First Western President Mark Zenger said that everything that can be done has been completed — just not the paving.

“If we could do it sooner, we would but there really is no way,” Zenger said of paving the section. “We’d love to but we can’t. We’re waiting for good enough weather to pave.”

First and foremost, the project’s troubles came from Mother Nature. Inclement weather forced a number of delays in earth movement at the project.

“We got as much completed as we could before the weather hit us,” said site foreman George Hubbard of Scarsella. “Right now, we’re basically working on erosion control.”

Now, the main delay has to do with local asphalt plants, which are now closed for the winter. Zenger explained that this time of year, the asphalt will only produce for extremely large orders. Since the “A” Street paving doesn’t fall into this category, it means First Western and Scarsella will have to wait until at least April or May to pave.

Even if the asphalt were available, it would not do any good with the current weather conditions.

“You can’t successfully pave in this kind of weather,” Hubbard explained. “It would bubble or crack.”

Since pavement is not available for now, Scarsella crews held off on grading that will need to be done prior to laying asphalt. Zenger said that decision was made so that motorists wouldn’t have to drive through worse conditions.

“It’s just a matter of doing the prep work and paving it now,” Zenger said.

Scarsella is also the contractor working on the Department of Transportation’s entrance to the property at the intersection of State Route 305 and SR 3 and the site’s “B” Street. Those projects include infrastructure work such as water lines, storm drain facilities, utilities and paving. The infrastructure work is mostly completed, while paving is in the same boat as the Finn Hill and “A” Street project — what you see is what you get until the weather clears up this spring.