Work on an $800,000 project aimed at beautifying the core of Main Street will begin this month, town officials told Main Street businesspeople this morning.

Phase 1 of the project will focus on the stretch of Main Street from the Post Office to Center Street and will involve repaving; creation of "bump out" curbing to accommodate additional trees, benches and trash receptables; replacement of the existing streetlight poles with new lights designed to look like old-fashioned globe lights on cast-iron poles; and redesign of two alleys connecting Main Street to Merchants Way.

Also added will be a decorative (but functional) "community clock" in front of the Post Office.

Bill Madden of GAF Engineering on Main Street, who worked on the project's design, noted that the planning group visited a variety of other communities that have completed similar downtown beautification projects and worked to adapt the best of what they saw "to fit Wareham Center."

Work by M.R. Pavao Contractor Inc. of Rehoboth is scheduled to begin later this month and be completed by the end of June, according to Peter Sanborn of the Community and Economic Development Authority. The "most intensive" work will take place in the spring.