January 18, 2005

Published in Wake Forest, NC

            During last week’s town board retreat, Deputy Town Manager Roe O’Donnell said he is studying what improvements are needed for South Main Street between Forbes Road and the bypass. “We may not need five lanes,” he said.

            Last spring’s bond issues included $9.5 million for streets, of which $1 million was earmarked to widen South Main from Rogers Road to Forbes Road. (See below for the plans for that.)

            The stretch from Forbes to the bypass includes the Forestville area with a number of homes, businesses and the Forestville Baptist Church, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

            Town Manager Mark Williams said recently the state Department of Transportation will have to send the contractor, S.T. Wooten, back to North Main Street to repair a long crack in the asphalt.

            Also, that traffic signal on Rogers Road at the entrance to Heritage Elementary and Heritage Middle School is still slated to be installed, though Williams said he did not know where it was on DOT’s installation list. Mayor Vivian Jones and other town commissioners vigorously lobbied for the signal, and state Sen. Neal Hunt was instrumental in getting it approved by DOT.

            Rogers Road, which was closed to reconstruct the intersection with Marshall Farm Road, has been reopened. The change is subtle, but essentially the peak of the hill just to the east of Marshall Farm Road was cut down by about 4 feet to improve the sight distance.

Wake Forest residents, victims of interminably long waits along North and South Main streets, are well aware there has been a flurry of street construction and reconstruction this summer and fall.

            On South Main Street between Capital Boulevard and Ligon Mill Road, Lanier Construction has almost completed the widening to five lanes, Deputy Town Manager Roe O’Donnell just before Christmas. Only “tiny odds and ends” remain to be done.

            However, you can expect bumps and lumps until fair weather returns in four months or so. “In the spring the state will come back in, mill down, put on a leveling course and resurface” from Capital to the N.C. 98 bypass, O’Donnell said.

            The town may ask the North Carolina Department of Transportation (or its contractor) not to mill out and resurface South Main from Rogers Road to Forbes Road “because we’re going to widen that,” O’Donnell said.

            The widening project is definitely going ahead though the timetable is not yet firm. O’Donnell said the plans are 25 percent complete, after which the town will have to buy the needed right-of-way. Construction could take place this coming summer. “It’s a fairly involved project,” he said, but he does not anticipate it will involve destroying any building.

            That is good news for people who appreciate Wake Forest history who had feared the widening might mean the end of the two-story grey building on the west side of South Main just south of the Forbes Road intersection. That was once Forestville Heights, a gas station (which is why it is so close to the street) and a place where college students could buy beer. Until the 1970s, when the town charter was rewritten, sales of beer or liquor were forbidden within town and within a mile of the town limits.

            The widening from Rogers Road to Forbes Road was a $1 million part of the $9.5-million bond issue for streets that town residents approved in May. One reason for the widening, then-Commissioner Rob Bridges said, was to ease the traffic tie-ups as parents left their children in the morning and picked them up in the afternoon at Wake Forest-Rolesville Middle School.

            This year’s second large project – and the one which has caused the recent traffic problems – is the combined roundabout and resurfacing along North and South Main streets.

            O’Donnell said the widening necessary for the roundabout where South Main meets the seminary campus has been done. The curb and gutter for the outside of the roundabout is in place. Next Lanier Construction will build the inside curb and gutter, replace a sidewalk and reconstruct an entrance to the church.

            Nothing more may be done until better weather, O’Donnell said. “We’re in discussions with the contractor about what to do and when.”

            Lanier subcontracted the resurfacing of North and South Main to the S.T. Wooten Corporation, which has completed most of the work except for some tie-ins to adjacent streets. Lanier will build the new curb and gutter, pull and reset granite curbing, and make the sidewalks handicapped-accessible.

            The resurfacing has left some obvious, though gentle, dips and bumps. That is usual for such an old street with a low speed limit, 25 miles per hour, O’Donnell said. “They don’t use the same kind of paving equipment on a street like that as they would on a higher-speed road. They try to pull it as level as they can, but they don’t run a profilometer on it.”

            The N.C. 98 bypass from South Main to Capital Boulevard is now scheduled to open in May, O’Donnell said. An earlier, optimistic prediction had been that the work could be completed by the end of the 2005. “The weather broke and they lost their window of opportunity.” O’Donnell said S.T. Wooten will do in May what they had planned for December. That includes closing Retail Drive for five days.

            There is progress on the third section of the bypass, which will run from Capital Boulevard to Thompson Mill Road. Wally Bowman, an engineer with DOT District 5 in Durham, said earlier this year that purchase of right-of-way for the third section began this year and construction is scheduled to begin in 2007.

            That third bypass portion includes a great deal of work at the western end to widen Falls of the Neuse Road and relocate it to the east and change the connection between Thompson Mill Road and the bypass. One existing section of N.C. 98 will be abandoned. A map showing the changes is available for view at the town planning department on Brooks Street.

            One idea being tossed around town hall is to extend East Owen Avenue from where it now ends between the police department and town hall down to South Franklin Street. It depends on where the new town hall is located, O’Donnell said. If it is built in the southeast corner of Brooks Street and East Owen, one possibility is to increase access to the town hall by extending Owen to Franklin and building a roundabout there.

            Meanwhile, town staff is working on the Renaissance Plan projects: roundabouts on South Franklin at the Elm Avenue and East Holding Avenue intersections. The spring bond issue included $2.4 million for the roundabouts and a treed median along South Franklin between them.

            S.T. Wooten is also the contractor for a small project, building a 100-foot section along Stadium Drive. O’Donnell said Wooten was waiting to proof roll, test for density and then pave.

            Plans still are for DOT to rebuild and widen the Stadium Drive bridge over Richland Creek in 2006.

            Another small project but one long needed is the sidewalk with curb and gutter along the west side of North Allen Road. It will be finished soon, O’Donnell said.