The town of Thompson, New York, needed a solution for the heavily used entrance road into the only casino in Sullivan County.
“The roadway was about 10 years old, and we were constantly crack sealing,” said Hayden Carnell, the town’s Highway Superintendent. “It needed some type of surface treatment.”
However, options were limited by the high volumes of traffic, day and night; a limited budget; and an upcoming Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) event that put a hard completion deadline on any work.
After an analysis of the road and various treatment options, the town opted for the fiber reinforced chip seal process they had successfully used on other roadways for the past 15 years. The tensile strength of the fibers in the stress-absorbing membrane/interlayer surface treatment bridges cracks in existing pavement to provide a resistant surface and restore skid resistance.
But for this project, the town added another layer — a fog seal overlay that increased protection from air and water intrusion, further extending the life of the surface and strengthening the road for all the traffic coming.
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The project treated a total of about 80,000 square yards on sections of Thompsonville Road and Resorts World Drive that led to Resorts World Catskills.
Because the roadway is part of a special taxing district funded by the local resorts but not by other taxpayers, there was a fixed budget.
“We couldn’t use money from the rest of the town’s roads,” Carnell said.
In order to make the project as cost-effective as possible, the town’s crews performed crack sealing and supplied aggregate, trucking, and traffic control. For all other labor, equipment, and materials for the surface treatment, they partnered with Gorman Construction, a 100-year-old, New York-based asphalt and road contractor that recently became part of All States Materials Group.
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The timing of the project added another challenge. Nestled in the Catskill Mountains, Sullivan County warms up later than surrounding counties, with weather similar to upstate New York.
“Our window of opportunity is smaller there,” said Tony Squicciarini, Gorman Construction’s Project Manager. “Because of the elevation, it doesn’t really warm up until May, and the town had to do some preparatory work before we came in.”
Then, the Legends of the LPGA Weekend — the first professional golf tournament in the Catskills since the 1960s — started on June 26, 2025, at the Monster Golf Club championship course adjacent to the casino.
“By the time the town did their prep work and we had all the materials in place, we had basically a week window from when we started to when we needed to be completely finished,” said Dane Mellon, Sales Manager for Gorman Construction.
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A constant flow of visitors travel to the resort property, which includes an 18-story hotel, casino and entertainment complex, and 10 bar and restaurant options. Fortunately, there are multiple access roads.
“For this project, we were able to totally close off segments and get a high volume of work done in a short amount of time,” Carnell said.
But that did not mean drivers followed detour routes, making traffic control an ongoing challenge for town employees.
“There’s a lot of traffic from out of the area, so we had five people at intersections telling people how to get around, even though we had signage,” Carnell said.
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After the town sealed minor cracks and prepared the roadway, Gorman applied the fiber reinforced chip seal in one pass, spraying approximately 0.42 gallons per square yard of a polymer-modified asphalt emulsion that is in a sandwich around a layer of finely chopped fiberglass fibers. This uses a specialized machine connected to Gorman’s BearCat asphalt distributor to place the combined, sandwiched layers of emulsion and fiberglass. They then covered the adhesive membrane with approximately 20 to 25 pounds per square yard of 1/4-inch aggregate using a BearCat chip spreader.
The town, with the help of neighboring Liberty, New York, trucked in the aggregate.
“We couldn’t keep up with our own trucks for how fast we were sealing the road to get the work done, so the town of Liberty provided trucks that allowed us to haul more stone per hour,” Carnell said.
The surface was then rolled using a Bomag rubber tire roller to ensure proper orientation and embed the cover aggregate into the emulsion layer. The process for the fiber reinforced chip seal and temporary striping took two days, then traffic temporarily resumed. After a day of curing under traffic, Gorman’s subcontractor came in to sweep any excess aggregate.
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“If you use a vacuum sweeper and then come right behind that with the fog seal, it’s able to lock in any of the stone dust or loose aggregate to give a better aesthetic and rideability,” Mellon said.
Gorman sprayed a light application (approximately 0.1 gallons per square yard) of diluted asphalt emulsion for the fog seal using a BearCat asphalt distributor, then spread approximately 0.5 pounds per square yard of a fine cover aggregate to aid in surface texture. That took two days of work, including a short time for curing, then traffic resumed. The striping contractor finished their work a week later.
Even with the short work window, the project finished on time.
With the tournament starting, Mellon said there was “no room for that to get pushed. The ability of our multiple crews working with the town and getting that done in a condensed amount of time took a lot of coordination, especially bringing traffic control into consideration, too. But coordinating all those pieces was really well done by everyone involved, and it went very smoothly.”
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“People are sometimes apprehensive about using a fiber reinforced chip seal treatment in an area that’s more highly traveled,” Mellon said. “But we were able to successfully do it right before a major event where there would be even more traffic than normal. It just showcases that with the sweeping and fog seal afterward, it can be successful in areas where people may not have historically thought about using it.”
With the fog seal, Squicciarini said that “it takes the pavement from a regular, raw aggregate color and turns it black. It also helps lock in the stone a little better. The perception is that you’re not driving on a gravel road but on a freshly paved surface.”
The darker surface also helped since this is one of the town’s widest roads.
“Most of our roads are just one lane in each direction, so we don’t have a lot of striping,” Carnell said. “We needed drivers to clearly see the turn arrows, stop bars, and lane striping. The fog sealing really darkens up the road, and it’s also another layer of protection that really locks in the stone surface for the higher volume of traffic.”
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Going forward, Carnell said the town is “going to use the fog seal on more of our heavier-trafficked roads. It’s kept the dust down. I think it’s a better look and a better seal.”
In fact, the project won the Pavement Preservation Excellence Award in 2025 from the New York Pavement Preservation Association. The organization’s Board of Directors votes on the award winner based on customer satisfaction, quality/workmanship, innovation, safety, and impact.
This summer, the town plans to use the same treatment plan with fiber reinforced chip seal and a fog seal for phase two of this project, the high-traffic roadway leading to the adjacent Kartrite Resort & Indoor Waterpark.
Squicciarini spent much of his childhood and early career about an hour away from this project.
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“When I was young, my dad owned one of the bigger paving businesses in Orange County,” he said. “When I was 11 or 12, he bought a sand and gravel bank, and we made it into a quarry that’s still operating today.”
After working at the quarry for a while, Squicciarini went on to operate his own heavy construction business for around 15 years. He then spent 17 years as a Highway Superintendent for his local municipality before joining Gorman 15 years ago.
All of those endeavors carried a common theme: Squicciarini’s father owned Highlands Paving Corporation then Highlands Stone, and Squicciarini operated Highlands Construction. The municipality he worked for? The town of Highlands, of course.
“This is the only industry I know, and I love it,” he said.
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- Owner: Town of Thompson, New York
- Contractor: Gorman Construction, Albany, New York
- Striping Contractor: Seneca Pavement Marking, Horseheads, New York
