As far as roads go in the Palm Coast area, Bulldog Drive is far from the longest.

But the city wants to turn the road into a gateway to its Town Center, which will soon be home to a new city hall.

Work on the $5 million project is wrapping up — and that's a good thing.

The project has impacted neighboring Flagler Palm Coast High School, and classes resume Aug. 18.

Carl Cote, project manager for the city of Palm Cosat, said that date has been circled on the city's calendar since the first pile of dirt was turned.

"We started the project off with the contractor—this is the date," Cote said. "That date cannot move."

On FPC's campus, principal Lynette Shott watched as the dust began to fly. She always wondered if things would be ready in time.

"Before we started, that thought runs through your head — if construction projects never get done on time," she said. "And so, we've kind of always had that in our head of we need a contingency plan."

It looks like that contingency plan can stay on the shelf, though.

The project is designed to help with traffic congestion around the school and along State Road 100 — shifting the school's entrance west by a few hundred yards.

It's also supposed to put an end to the flooding problem in the area, which has made FPC's front parking lot unusable at times. It collects so much rain that students often refer to it as Lake Bulldog.

"That's been a challenge all along," Cote said. "That's one of the main goals of the project. Right now, we have a temporary pump. The final solution is a pump station that's going to pump water from that site, off site."

Shott said school officials remain "very optimistic."

"I don't think you'll know for sure exactly what it's going to look like, but we're very optimistic that it has resolved a lot of those water issues," she said.

And despite the work, you can still see where the highway sits above the school parking lot. But a series of pumps are designed to do what gravity failed to do on its own.

Just last week, the Palm Coast City Council had to approve an additional $250,000 to cover additional work at the site just to keep things on schedule.

Cote said they should be finished with the entire project sometime this fall.