FAYETTEVILLE — With new money in place, officials with the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department, University of Arkansas and city of Fayetteville are ready to move forward with plans to widen Razorback Road from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to Leroy Pond Drive.
Meeting Information
Road Widening
What: A public meeting to review plans for widening Razorback Road
When: 4 to 7 p.m., April 4
Where: Fayetteville High School Cafeteria, 994 W. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Members of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission earlier this month included $1.1 million for Razorback Road widening in a $6.5 million package of road and bridge projects. The projects will be paid for using federal Surface Transportation Program money, which became available after Northwest Arkansas’ population hit 200,000 residents.
The money provides a shot in the arm to the estimated $2.6 million Razorback Road project that has been on the university’s and city’s wish lists for years.
“This will finally give us sidewalks on both sides of the street — not only on game day, but as students park and walk to get to classes,” said Mike Johnson, the university’s associate vice chancellor for facilities.
Razorback Road runs alongside Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium and the university’s 1,400-space Lot 56. Leroy Pond Drive connects Clinton Drive to Razorback Road between Lot 56 and Bud Walton Arena.
The project includes widening Razorback to four lanes with a center turn lane and stoplights at Leroy Pond. According to Johnson, several entrances along the west side of Razorback will close, as will an entrance to Lot 56 just south of Leroy Pond.
The roughly quarter-mile stretch of Razorback that’s being improved will tie into four lanes of traffic south of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard that were finished in 2007. Garland Avenue, which — like Razorback Road — is known as Arkansas 112, is being widened to four lanes north of North Street. City Engineer Chris Brown said Monday that road construction on Garland will begin this year.
Brown called the Razorback Road project “extremely important to the university.”
“This opens up a couple of entrances to the UA,” he said. “It creates a link between (Interstate) 540 and the university.”
A local match of $520,000 is required in addition to the $1.1 million recently infused into the project and another $1 million federal contribution that came in 2003.
It was unclear Monday whether the university will split the $520,000 price tag with the city. Johnson valued right of way that university officials are donating for the project at nearly $1 million.
Danny Straessle, a spokesman for the highway department, said road construction could begin by spring 2014. Preliminary designs are set to be reviewed at an April 4 public meeting.
Johnson and Brown said Razorback Road will eventually be widened from Leroy Pond Drive to Maple Street and on to Garland Avenue. No funding source has been identified for that phase of the project, which Johnson estimated at between $11 million and $12 million. Additional stoplights are planned at Meadow and Maple streets.