BENTONVILLE -- The lanes are open. The traffic lights are up. The widening of Southwest Regional Airport Boulevard is finished, five months behind schedule.
"The short-term you're going to see traffic relief, no question," said Troy Galloway, community and economic development director. "The long term, the availability of that infrastructure is going to encourage more growth and development in the southwest part of the city."
City/state partnership
In 2008, the City Council approved for the city to enter into a partnership with the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department to widen Southwest Regional Airport Boulevard.
The city agreed to provide $10.4 million for the design, right of way acquisition and utility relocation. The Highway Department paid the $9 million construction cost.
Source: Staff report
Southwest Regional Airport Boulevard is also Arkansas 12. It serves as the main road in to and out of the city's southwest corner. The road saw heavy congestion, especially during peak travel times in the mornings and evenings.
The project widened Southwest Regional Airport Boulevard from two to five lanes for 2.7 miles between Rainbow Curve on Walton Boulevard west slightly past Shell Road. The Highway Department also installed traffic signals at Greenhouse Road and Southwest Bright Road.
Construction began in November 2014 and was initially expected to be finished by November 2016.
"We've had to move that back a couple of different times," Steve Lawrence, Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department District 9 engineer, said of the completion date.
The main issue was the amount of utilities that had to be moved, he said. Road construction began before the utility work was finished so there were many days where APAC Central, the construction contractor, couldn't use much of its workforce.
"That's a growing area out there, so just about every utility is out there," Lawrence said.
There have been 621 building permits issued west of Walton Boulevard and south of Southwest 14th Street in 2015 and 2016, according to city data. Of those, 555 have been for single-family homes, 31 for duplexes, 28 for multifamily developments with more than five units, and seven for commercial developments, including one for a new school on Southwest Featherston Road.
The city's southwest corner and downtown have been the two development hot spots over the past couple of years and continue to be so, Galloway said. Downtown is where everyone wants to be but can be cost prohibitive, he explained, while the southwest area has "relatively affordable developable land," with the key ingredients for residential growth -- a transportation network, water, sewer and electric.
Keeping up with infrastructure is a challenge for any growing community, especially with one that is growing as rapidly as Bentonville, Galloway said.
"The pace of growth and development is always going to outstrip our community's ability to provide all of the infrastructure it needs at any one given point in time," he said. "We're always going to be working at a deficit somewhere. Right now, the most obvious to most people is transportation. That's the one people see. That's the one they experience."
Motorists stopped in traffic along Southwest Regional Airport Boulevard during construction helped increase business at Natural State Chiropractic, said Dillon Crawford, a chiropractor there.
People would look around and see their sign when stuck in traffic. Some called while they were at a standstill.
"It was really kind of cool," Crawford said. "We actually got a lot of patients from that."
He was told when he opened his office in September 2016 the road would be completed by December of that year so his patients did have a tough commute to his office for longer than expected.
"But the location is awesome though, to be in this area," Crawford said. "It's expanding so quickly around this area. From a business standpoint for the next five to 10 years, this is an awesome place to be."
The widening of the state highway will be followed by an improvement to the intersection with Walton Boulevard. A second right turn lane will be added to help move traffic west.
Lawrence said he hopes the project gets under way in the next few months.
NW News on 04/16/2017