January 24, 2007

Published in Wake Forest, NC

            Even that is not definite because detailed engineering must be done before the project can be sent out for bids. If it does go forward, Deputy Town Manager Roe O’Donnell said this week, it will be late summer before construction can begin.

            O’Donnell said the engineering plans will be for the entire project with roundabouts at Holding Avenue and Elm Avenue and medians from Holding to Wait Avenue. However, he said, the cost of the project will probably mean only part of the project can be done with the bond money from 2005.

            That would include the base bid – the two roundabouts with end treatments that would be monument signs for downtown – and the landscaped median and sidewalks from Holding to Elm. If the bids are low enough, they can add the median from Elm to Wait. As for a median from the N.C. 98 bypass to Holding, “We do not contemplate doing that now.”

            The cost for this project, part of the Renaissance Plan for the heart of the town, has been rising faster than a hot air balloon.

            It began at $2.4 million when voters approved the $9.5 million streets and sidewalk bonds in the spring of 2005. Late last year O’Donnell said new estimates put the cost at $4.2 million, and Finance Director Aileen Staples sold that amount of bonds in the fall for the project.

            By the time of the town board’s planning retreat on Jan. 12, the cost was at $5.66 million. O’Donnell said he could reduce that by $600,000 if the street is built with street lights in the median rather than on the sides.

            The red tape at the Wake Forest Fire Department’s Station #1 on Elm does indicate the extent of the right-of-way and construction easements needed for the roundabout.

            “It’s going to be standard full-sized urban roundabout,” O’Donnell said, and the one at Holding will be the same size. The town’s first roundabout, the one at South Main and South Avenue, is the minimum size for a compact urban roundabout. It had to be compact to fit between the historic properties.

            The size of the roundabout at Elm, as the red tape shows, means the fire department has to find a new location for the Jimmy Keith memorial statue.

            While the detailed engineering for Franklin Street is underway, O’Donnell is also assembling an estimate of what it would cost to widen Ligon Mill Road from South Main Street west past a side entrance to Wal-Mart.

            Parker & Orleans Home Builders, the developers of Reynolds Mill subdivision, plan to remove the sewer pump station where Ligon Mill now dead ends, grade the right-of-way for the street to a four-lane width and pave two lanes to the intersection with Caveness Farm Avenue.

            Opening that road – and extending it later to the N.C. 98 bypass – “will take some pressure off South Main Street. That, along with the Franklin Street extension when it’s completed,” O’Donnell said.

            The Franklin Street extension, which would be built by the Holding Village developers if the project is approved by the town, “will give people in Heritage another way to go north rather than having to come out onto South Main to go north.”

            At the retreat, the town commissioners agreed they might use the $1 million earmarked in the bond issue to widen South Main from Rogers Road to Forbes Road for the Ligon Mill project. South Main residents had strongly opposed the town’s plan for four lanes and a 4-foot concrete median.

            Ligon Mill will be built as a four-lane road with a median with turn lanes in the median. The town’s transportation plan calls for it to reach and cross Durham Road near the Wake Forest Business Park and McDonald’s.

            But where Ligon Mill meets South Main, O’Donnell said, it will be widened to six lanes to accommodate two left turn lanes. The two full lanes leading east foretell a future when that section of Ligon Mill will also be completely widened to four lanes.

            The rising costs of road construction mean that three projects in the 2005 bond issue may be delayed until another bond issue. Along with the $1 million for South Main and $2.4 million for Franklin Street, voters were told the money would pay $3.3 million to build part of the North Loop, $2.2 million to widen Stadium Drive to three lanes from Rock Spring Road to Capital Boulevard and $600,000 to build a sidewalk on North White Street.

            A decision has not been made about any of the $9.5 million except for the Franklin Street project. During the retreat, Mayor Vivian Jones said they want to see the North White Street sidewalk built from the current bond monies, and Commissioner David Camacho said he wants the North Loop built to help spur economic development in the northeast part of town.