This Too Shall Pass

About this time next year, traffic will flow like poetic water along Bees Ferry Road, as county roadway widening projects there will have been completed, and the City of Charleston’s “circle” that borders it will also be finished.
Well, “probably” by this time next year, according to city and county officials.
Currently, the city is engaged in the final paperwork stages needed before dirt can be moved and circle roads of asphalt lain. The traffic “circle” will ring an enhanced Bees Ferry and Glenn McConnell intersection, facilitating neighborhood and shopping traffic
There’s still plenty left on the city’s to-do list. First is answering design questions posed by the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) and the county Transportation Development office on its most recent design plan.
Additionally, the city still has to kowtow to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for possible environmental issues, as well as to the state Office of Coastal Resources, before the circle project can move forward.
Delaying the “circle” project was a successful request from one of the bordering landowners last year that the city commission another redesign to mitigate for some of the existing wetlands on their property.
Christopher Morgan, director of the city’s Planning Division, said the redesign was done and that ensured the city gaining the right of way. This phase is standard with environmental permitting, he said.
Already, one-fourth of the circle has been completed, linking Bees Ferry and Glenn McConnell Parkway via the Wal-Mart property. Morgan said that the road there was, in part, constructed in such a way that it would provide solutions to some of the environmental mitigation issues along that piece of property.
He said that since the Wal-Mart piece was constructed first, it would serve as an example of a larger street grid, with businesses lining the roadway opposite from the Wal-Mart property creating “a curvilinear Main Street feel out there.”
All four corners of the ring road will have this same street grid, but the quadrant catty-corner to Wal-Mart’s won’t have as much development, due to extensive wetlands located there.
Morgan said the plan is to make use of the road builders who are doing the widening project for the county to also do the city’s planned road “to take advantage of economies of scale.”
The start date of the city’s portion of the project, which will actually be overseen and managed by the county, is still up in the air, according to Devri Detoma, a county construction manager and engineer.
So far, Detoma said this week, the county project is on schedule, construction has begun, and a level of “substantive completion” on the widening project will be met this time next year. That includes a recent change-order for access to a new apartment complex, at the complex developer’s request and cost.
But, because of the nature of contracts between the county and its road-builders, there’s no absolute way to say when construction on the remaining circle will begin.
Contracts of this kind, Detoma said, do not prioritize construction phases, leaving that up to the contractor, typically only holding the road-builders to the final completion date.
That being said, Detoma said that if the county sat down with their contractor and said completion of circle was of paramount importance, something could be worked out.
The cost of the widening project, which began in concept in April of 2007, will be $32 million, the second-largest county roads project since Johnnie Dodds Boulevard was widened at twice the cost.
But, there’s still not a final cost estimate on the circle due to the waiting period that’s unavoidable in the planning phase. It was originally in the $7 million phase.
And the combined projects may well be worth their respective weights in asphalt, err, gold, according to Dist. 10 City Councilman Dean Reigel, who represents many of the nearby neighborhoods.
Reigel said the area’s quality of life will zoom thanks to reduced congestion, better flowing traffic along and between the Savannah Highway and Hwy. 61 corridors, leading to increased commercial retail development.
“I just think this corridor is ripe” for development like the mixed-use projects he’s seen spring up on Proximity Lane, near where the circle will be located.
But it will be at least a year until all the work is done. Hopefully, when all is done, it will be worth it – or at least good enough people will forget the hassles, like nighttime lane closings and endless lines of orange barrels and cones on their daily commutes.