A summer’s day in the Watch Hill section of Westerly. The first phase of the utility project will eliminate 35 poles on Bay Street and Fort Road, and is expected to cost about $3.5 million.

The Providence Journal Glenn Osmundson

WESTERLY — The already picturesque Watch Hill village is set to become even more attractive by 2010, when work burying utility wires is expected to be finished and poles taken down.

The Watch Hill Conservancy and Watch Hill Fire District said the work will be done with private money. The first of two phases, eliminating 35 poles on Bay Street and Fort Road, is expected to cost roughly $3.5 million.

Digging will begin in the fall of next year. Because the first phase is in a flood plain, that part of the project is complex, expensive and subject to specific regulations. Trenches will hold electricity, phone, cable, Internet and fire-alarm lines, making them less vulnerable to storm damage, said the conservancy’s Grant Simmons.

The second phase will include Larkin Road, a portion of Lighthouse Road, Bluff Avenue and Plimpton Road, all on higher ground. In all, 73 poles will be eliminated, the conservancy announced.

Chaplin Barnes, the conservancy’s executive director, said the work would be finished before the summer of 2010. The $135-million Ocean House, a reconstruction of the hotel that stood near the corner of Plimpton Road and Bluff Avenue since 1868, is expected to reopen in the spring of 2010 with 48 hotel rooms and 24 private residences.

The underground utility project got under way in the fall of last year, when Ruven Liebhaber began work as project development manager. Cherenzia Associates was selected in December to conduct planning studies and research property lines, rights of ways and site features for determining trench placement.

National Grid, the state’s primary power utility, will design the electrical distribution, and the cooperation and approvals of telecommunications companies Verizon and Cox will also have to be coordinated.

dnaylor@projo.com