By Scott Jenkins
sjenkins@salisburypost.com
Hoping to secure federal stimulus money, the state has purchased nearly all the property it needs in Rowan and Davidson counties to build a new Interstate 85 bridge over the Yadkin River, a state official said.
“We are trying to plan it now to where we would be ready to start construction almost immediately” if the project wins federal approval, Pat Ivey, Division 9 engineer with the N.C. Department of Transportation, said last week.
The state submitted an application to Washington in September for $300 million, the largest amount available to any state from a $1.5 billion pool of competitive grants created as part of the federal economic stimulus package.
N.C. officials won’t hear anything until a decision is made, Ivey said, but that could come as early as January. The law creating the stimulus package requires projects to be “shovel ready.”
“To do that, we needed to get all the right of way assembled,” Ivey said. The state has, or will have by January, all the permits it needs to build the new bridge, he said.
The Department of Transportation should complete right-of-way acquisition this month, Ivey said. That will be a total of 96 parcels and 60-70 acres. The state has set aside about $20 million to buy the land.
The federal program also gives states a three-year deadline to complete projects awarded stimulus money. To meet that deadline, the bridge would be constructed in a design-build fashion, which speeds up the process.
Ivey said the $300 million in federal money would be enough to pay for both phases of the planned 6.8-mile project: widening Long Ferry Road in Rowan to N.C. 150 in Davidson, which incudes the new bridge; and widening N.C. 150 to the U.S. 29/70 split in Davidson.
The existing Yadkin River Bridge was built in 1955. Despite support for replacing it, the project has been on hold since 2004 because of funding issues.