Portland's Congress Square Intersection Reconstruction Starts September 2025

Prepare yourself if you travel into Portland through Congress Square. It's about to get a facelift.

Congress Square Construction Begins September 15

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The City of Portland's Department of Public Works has made the announcement that reconstruction of the Congress Square intersection will start on Monday, September 15, 2025.

This project includes mill and overlay of the intersection, sidewalk, ADA improvements, installation of new traffic signals, and lighting and landscaping improvements. Sounds like a lot of work!

What Should Drivers Expect?

In a word? Delays. Here are the changes to the traffic flow through Congress Square while construction is underway that will slow you down:

Congress Street will be one lane in each direction
High Street will have two lanes approaching Congress Square
High Street will have one lane leaving Congress Square

Be prepared.

The contractor, Coastal Road Repair, has a contract with the City of Portland through July 30, 2026. That doesn't mean that the project wouldn't be completed sooner than that date. Construction will come to a stop for the winter on November 30, 2025, and resume on April 15, 2026.

There will be some construction on the sidewalks in front of buildings near Congress Square, but Coastal Road Repair will do what it can to make the buildings accessible to pedestrians.

Change is hard, especially when it's right in the middle of your route into Portland. There's a lot of construction going on in this city, including an expansion of the Portland Museum of Art and new buildings sprouting up all over the city.

Hopefully, this mess will be over sooner rather than later.