Based on preliminary designs, the Glade Road project will reconstruct the road from the western city limits to Heritage Avenue.[/caption]According to preliminary designs, the multimillion-dollar project will reconstruct Glade Road from the western city limits to Heritage Avenue and will be broken into four phases of construction over the next eight years.
While council members all agree that Phase 1 of the construction work should begin in 2016 and include the section of Glade Road from Bransford Road to Manning Drive, they have not decided if they are going to keep the phasing for the remaining sections the same as the preliminary designs.
Mayor David Kelly questioned if keeping Manning Drive to Pool Road as Phase 2 would be a feasible idea, as reconstructing Phase 1 and Phase 2 consecutively would mean homeowners in that specific area would be dealing with heavy construction for years with no relief.
“I think my biggest concern is that all of the other phases we don’t have to close down the road, but we do have to close down the Glade and Bluebonnet [intersection] and there’s no good alternative around to our core commercial area,” he said. “So that’s going to be a very difficult time.
Do we want to offer homeowners some relief for a bit and then come back in? We need to talk to homeowners about it. Maybe they want to get it all done in back-to-back sections. I would hate to see us congested all in one area for so long— we are talking a couple of years. It’s not a short stretch it’s about a mile and a half.”
Council member Mike Taylor said he supports the phasing as presented.
“Every home is going to have ingress, egress,” Taylor said. “I think it's kind of misleading to say people will be locked out of their house for two and a half years. That’s just not accurate. It may be rough. I’ve gone through this too and I know what’s it like, but you get past it and you’re very happy with the end results. You’ll forget these things once the final product is in.”
As presented the preliminary designs call for construction to start in 2016 and end in 2023. In the work session it was stated there would be an almost three-year gap between Phase 3 and Phase 4 because the construction is going to be cash funded and would not be able to be funded until 2022.
“It’s a clear and present inconvenience no matter what. But I think the phasing is key to it,” Taylor said. “If you do it to where people can get in and out of their homes, most of us are adults in this city and we’ve been through reconstruction—just like Pleasant Run Road that we’re dealing with now.”
The next work session will be held in the fall.
