In the race to construction completion, two of the three large local projects – the new Wake Forest Town Hall and the Wake Forest Historical Museum – fell out as competitors long ago, missing their initial dates by months and months.
However – ta-da – we do have a winner: The Wake Forest-Rolesville High School campus-wide renovations are complete as scheduled and ready for teachers to move in this week, for students to return on Aug. 25.
As a celebration, Principal Tina Hoots is inviting area residents to a bus-moving, sort of a ribbon-cutting, that will take place Monday, Aug. 16, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. It will be a time for people to tour the school, including the new four-story classroom building, and view the new two-story parking deck.
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The Gazette has been ignoring one of the more entertaining aspects of this publication – answering the questions and gripes and concerns many of you have about a variety of topics. This week we will at least address if not answer some of them and will attempt to do the same for the rest next week.
Jones Dairy Road’s closing for through traffic has impacted many residents in and out of town on the west side. They grumble why it will take a year to replace two bridges.
The answer is that there are homes between the two bridges, the southernmost across Austin Creek, the northernmost across Smith Creek, and the N.C. Department of Transportation had to provide access for the people living there.
Right now the contractor, Atwell Construction, has crews at work on the Austin Creek bridge, and DOT Assistant Resident Engineer Mark Luther said the goal is to finish that bridge by the end of 2010, then move north to Smith Creek to finish that one by or near June 15, 2011. The road was closed on June 23.
Luther admitted he could not promise completion of the second bridge by June 15, 2011, and he also said the official detour was DOT’s only option because other roads around the area – Heritage Club Drive, Marshall Farm Street, Clearspring Drive – are all private or subdivision roads. “It was not an option for us to use them.”
For people living along Jones Dairy Road or Chalks Road or in subdivisions that access either road, the official detour is to go to Averette Road, then to N.C. 98 and the Calvin Jones Highway. However, one nearby resident said, “The traffic through the unofficial detour through Heritage is probably driving people who live on Heritage Club Drive crazy.”
A related construction project, the relocation of Chalks Road to align with the entrance of Bowling Green subdivision’s entrance on Jones Dairy is well underway. The Town of Wake Forest is paying for the project under a contract with Triangle Paving and Grading.
Assistant Town Engineer Holly Spring said this week the firm is doing grading and storm drainage work now and the completion date is in the spring.
As for the related question about the yard full of junked cars the clearing brought into view, Spring said, “We’re not one hundred percent sure what we’re going to do.” The house and land belong to Johnny Tanner. “We are thinking about ideas like a fence or landscaping but there’s not a final conclusion.”