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The appraised cost of land along South
Main Street is as much as seven times
higher than two years ago, and that
escalating cost may alter the widening
plans for South Main Street to include a
concrete median.
At the same time, the
estimated cost of the South Franklin
Street project – two roundabouts,
sidewalks on each side, street trees and
a landscaped median – has come close to
doubling, going from $2.4 million last
year to $4.2 million this year.
This means that when the
town begins to sell the $9.5 million in
street bonds approved last year, it will
sell $5.2 million or perhaps $5.7
million to cover just those two
projects. The additional $500,000,
Finance Director Aileen Staples said
during last week’s retreat, would be to
cover the additional costs for the South
Main Street widening from Rogers Road to
Forbes Road, estimated last year to cost
$1 million.
In 2005 it was planned that
$9.5 million would pay for those two
projects and also stretch to pay for
$3.3 million to build part of the North
Loop, $2.2 million to widen Stadium to
three lanes from Rock Springs Road to
Capital Boulevard, and $600,000 to build
a sidewalk on North White Street from
Juniper Avenue to Flaherty Park.
In a year $9.5 million worth
of work has grown to $11.8 million
without current estimates for the North
Loop, Stadium and sidewalk projects.
Town Manager Mark Williams
said the town board will make the
decision about the Franklin Street
funding. “Once
the design is complete and we take bids,
assuming the bids for the entire project
do come in over the original $2.4
million, the board will have to make a
decision to find more funds or phase the
work. The bids will be done in such a
way that they can phase the work.”
Rather than phasing the work
on South Main, the town may shrink the
project from five to four lanes and
install a concrete median.
“DOT likes medians,” Deputy
Town Manager Roe O’Donnell said Friday.
“Eventually, they have said,
they want all of South Main Street with
a median.”
The project requires the
town to buy small amounts of
right-of-way from 12 property owners,
mostly on the east side of the
heavily-traveled street.
The third-party appraisals
for the small slices of land came in
with costs that O’Donnell called “an
eye-opener.” The cost of the
right-of-way for the five-lane street
would be almost three times the
construction cost, O’Donnell said.
To cut the costs, the town
may reduce the width of the road and add
the median, a ploy which will have to be
approved by DOT. North of Forbes Road,
South Main Street remains at two lanes,
changing to three where the stub of
Forestville Road intersects it.
Another way to cut the costs
was suggested by Commissioner Margaret
Stinnett, whose family business, Jones
Hardware, suffered after DOT installed a
concrete median in N.C. 98 just to the
west of the Capital Boulevard bridge and
blocked left turns into the business.
“Threaten them with the median,” she
said of the affected businesses on the
east side of South Main, and they might
rethink the sale price.
The median would mean that
anyone wanting to make a left turn in
that section of the street would have to
go to the end of the median and make a
U-turn. Also, anyone traveling north and
wanting to turn into Selsey Drive would
have to make a U-turn at Forbes or enter
Forbes Road to get to Selsey. There are
also some individual driveways to homes
in that section.
The affected businesses on
the east side are two dentists’ offices,
two professional office buildings, and a
doctor’s office.
O’Donnell said the engineers
are studying traffic patterns to
determine how many left turns are made.
Medians, he said Monday, “have to be
judiciously placed. You don’t want too
many people doing U-turns.” Streets with
medians are safer, he said, and provide
better traffic flow.
O’Donnell was reluctant to
say much Monday because the town is
negotiating with the property owners.
In 2004 and 2005, when the
town was purchasing the right-of-way to
widen South Main from Capital Boulevard
to Rogers Road, the amounts to each
landowner were small but the costs, when
translated into dollars per acre, were
large.
The town paid one landowner
$31,720 for 0.07 acre, which
extrapolates to $421,422.85 per acre.
There were owners who sold
0.03 acres each for about $16,500, which
works out to $530,000 or so an acre.
One of the largest town
payments was $23,020 for 0.005 acre, and
that works out to $4.6 million.
A memo O’Donnell prepared in
July of 2004 listed the seven
right-of-way and easement purchases that
totaled $161,101. With attorney fees,
appraisals and surveying, the
right-of-way cost for the South Main
Street widening from Capital to Ligon
Mill Road was $225,401.
The town also paid for
utility relocations, and the money for
the widening itself was from the
governor’s North Carolina Moving Ahead
funds. Those funds will also pay for the
repair and repaving that will begin this
week for both South Main and portions of
N.C. 98 through town |
