Bypass Should Ease Springdale?s Traffic Headache

Springdale’s fortune and folly is that it’s situated right in the heart of northwest Arkansas.

The city’s primary east-west artery is clogged by dense traffic, but an economy-pumping bypass could bring relief before 2010.

By mid-summer, one of four potential east-west corridors penciled in north of Springdale will be chosen for its $200 million U.S. Highway 412 bypass. State highway commissioner Jonathan Barnett of Siloam Springs said the resulting four-lane loop will be as big an economic engine for the area as the opening of Interstate-540, the Two-Ton rural water project or the regional airport.

“This will be a tremendous shot in the arm,” Barnett said. “The 412 bypass will relieve Springdale’s congestion and help not just the economic development there, but also in Bethel Heights, Lowell, Rogers, Elm Springs and Tontitown.”

The prospective bypass routes change daily. Field environmental analysis crews with the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department are tromping through 1,000-foot wide swaths carved by laser surveys to determine the most feasible corridor.

While the exact corridor is still up in the air, the bypass will for sure start east of Butterfield Coach Road in Springdale and arc north. It will turn west in Bethel Heights and curve west of Tontitown.

Any of the four variations will overlap an access spur to the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport that’s farther along its environmental study process. The two-lane access road’s corridor will be chosen in March.

The plan, said Barnett and regional airport staff director Scott Van Laningham, is to coordinate efforts and save money in the long run.

“We’re building an access road and they’re building a bypass, so we’re proceeding like we’re building all the way to I-540,” Van Laningham said. “But so we don’t end up with two separate roads, we’re meeting regularly with the highway department to compare notes … We’re trying to do what’s smart.”

Paved With Gold?

Price estimates for the airport’s access road, which could be completed by 2005, run from $35 million-$40 million. The AHTD’s official estimate of $200 million for a Springdale 412 bypass does not include right-of-way acquisitions, which could prove costly given the area’s escalating real estate prices.

Local real estate brokers estimate a “fair market value” for rural pasture land in south Benton County is $3,000-$5,000 per acre depending on the property’s topography. That rises to $10,000-$40,000 along 412 Business in Springdale, although brokers say lately that reflects the “asking” and not necessarily the “getting” price.

“This will be the most expensive right-of-way acquisition in the state’s history,” Barnett said. “We don’t have appraised values yet for all of the perspective bypass area, but we know land in northwest Arkansas is certainly a premium.”

Congressman Asa Hutchinson, R-Arkansas, helped get the airport’s leg of the project in the most recent federal intermodal highway package, resulting in $16 million in funding.

“We’re going to issue bonds that we’ll repay for the rest,” Van Laningham said. The airport has already spent $1.2 million toward the access road project, including about $1 million toward an environmental impact statement.

Van Laningham said the airport is considering several options to raise revenue including charging a ground transportation fee to enter the airport premises. The current parking fee booth could be moved for that purpose and used to collect $1 per vehicle for airport access.

The bypass project’s funding is more difficult to get at, since most of it is still in the works. Randy Ort, public affairs officer for the AHTD, said to date it has officially been appropriated $1.1 million in federal funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s “corridors and borders” program. Additional staggered funding is being sought through the state’s three-year Statewide Transportation Improvement Program plan, which may be viewed at www.ahtd.state.ar.us.

Lay of the Landowners

Officials working on both projects said there’s no way to gauge which landowners will fall in the paths of the bypass and access road, especially since neither route has been finalized. But Van Laningham and Barnett estimated more than 100 medium-to-small chucks of land will have to be acquired.

No one land owner is believed to have a large enough tract near the proposed corridors that it would be intersected by a significant amount of highway. An appraisal process for right-of-way will begin as soon as routes are chosen.

“We’ll have to go through the early appraisal process,” Van Laningham said. “Then we’ll get second appraisals, review them, and if it comes to it we’ll use our power of imminent domain.”

The corridor widths will be narrowed from 1,000 feet to 300 after a record of decision is issued the environmental studies. Avoiding barns, houses, farms and environmentally sensitive areas will shape the roads as they’re cut down.

Harold Beaver, the AHTD’s District 4 engineer, is responsible for all construction on state highways that uses federal dollars. He said no matter how diligently the roads are constructed, there will be some drawbacks. The overall benefits, he said, make it worth pursuing.

“It’s not possible to build a road of this type without both negatives and positives for people,” Beaver said. “Even if we were building a highway out in the middle of nothing, that would still affect the nothingness, I guess.”

Head Room

Philip Taldo, a co-owner and broker at Griffin Realtors in Springdale, is his city’s representative on the regional airport authority and a member of NARTS, the Northwest Arkansas Regional Transportation Study. NARTS sets priorities for federally funded road projects in Benton and Washington counties.

Taldo said for the city to really benefit from the bypass, the road must fall as far north as is reasonable.

“We don’t want to divide the north tip of the city with a bypass,” Taldo said. “An Interstate usually creates a natural border, and we need a little girth left for growth. Another issue is the access points, or interchanges.

“It still sticks in the craw of a lot of Springdale people that we only have two I-540 exits right now compared to towns that surround us having five or six.”

Perry Webb, president of the Springdale Chamber of Commerce, said a bypass access to Wagon Wheel Road is especially important, since the east-west throughway is probably the best existing road in north Springdale that can help traffic flow to I-540. And of course, Webb said, relieving pressure at I-540 and 412 is a must.

Patsy Christie, planning and community development director for Springdale, said the congestion at I-540 and 412 makes it hard to get in and out of businesses in that area.

“I don’t know that you can say it’s completely stifled business there, but it’s definitely had an impact,” Christie said.”From a planning standpoint, it’s very important that the bypass is done as quickly and as far north as possible.”

Sam Mathias, owner of Mathias Properties Inc. in Springdale, owns eight shopping centers on existing 412, including Ozark Center Point Place and Skyler Center. He said the road’s congestion definitely hampers customer patronage in that area.

“During the morning and evening rush, it’s impossible to get through,” Mathias said. “The bypass relief will not come fast enough for us.”