Chaffee Crossing Eagerly Awaits I-49

Only two projects remain to complete a small but vital portion of an interstate that will one day connect the Fort Smith region to the Gulf Coast at Lafayette, La., to New Orleans and to Kansas City, Mo., and points north.

From Kansas City, drivers can access a couple of interstates that reach to the Canadian border.

The 6-mile stretch of Interstate 49 that goes from U.S. 71 near Jenny Lind to Arkansas Highway 22 at Barling is expected to be finished next summer, costing a total of about $96 million. And it runs through the heart of the 7,000-acre Chaffee Crossing, a major industrial, commercial and residential development in the Fort Smith region.

Getting I-49 completed will benefit the region — and the state — in many ways, said Ivy Owen, executive director of the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority, which oversees development of Chaffee Crossing. Chief among these, he said, is the north-south corridor it will create that the region doesn’t currently have.

“Opening that route will open up opportunities with our port so we can be competitive with the ports at Memphis and Tulsa,” Owen said. “It will let us get product in and out of the area on the highway.”

But the construction work alone is already having a positive impact, he said.

“We are experiencing a fantastic surge in land sales, partly because of I-49,” Owen said. “And when it is complete next year, the demand for Chaffee Crossing will skyrocket.”

Most recently, in late June, FCRA officials said they sold 90 acres at highways 59 and 22 in Barling to a Hot Springs real estate group, partnering with a Dallas mall developer, for about $2.2 million. The group plans to build a 70-store outdoor shopping mall much like Pinnacle Hills Promenade in Rogers, and officials say it could create up to 700 jobs.

With three interchanges in the Chaffee Crossing stretch, businesses like truck stops and convenience stores also are eager to locate on the prime highway frontage, Owen said.

Also, First Baptist Church of Fort Smith is moving to Chaffee Crossing, where it will be situated right on the new interstate.

Paving of the new roadway will complete this portion of the highway project, Joe Shipman said, just before retiring at the end of June as the area engineer for the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department.

Once the paving’s done, signs will be installed and the road opened to traffic, he said.

 

Chaffee Charge

“I-49 forms the backbone for our development here at Chaffee Crossing,” Owen said.

“Residential is booming,” he said. “Six residential neighborhoods are going up, and they can’t build houses fast enough.”

With that growth comes the need for schools, and land has been set aside for a new high school complex. The area’s recreational amenities include a nine-hole golf course and other athletic facilities, a museum and the 170-acre Janet Huckabee Arkansas River Valley Nature Center.

But the mixed-use development also boasts 65 businesses, schools, churches and government offices. Its corporate residents include such heavy-hitters as airgun maker Umarex USA and Mars Petcare. Also, the as-yet-unused Mitsubishi plant, intended for wind-turbine manufacturing, stands ready for that company or a different tenant.

Last fall, Old Dominion Freight Lines built a 65-bay terminal at Chaffee Crossing.

In December, German firearms manufacturer Walther Arms Inc. said it was locating its U.S. headquarters in Chaffee Crossing, where it will share a campus with sister company Umarex. The two firms together will spend more than $7 million to expand the facility and operations over the next five years, creating between 70 and 120 jobs.

And in March, Atlanta-based Phoenix Metals Inc. said it would build a $4 million metal-processing center and warehouse on 11 acres at Chaffee Crossing, and spend another $8 million on new equipment for the facilities. The move could create up to 40 jobs over the next three years, the company said.

Chaffee Crossing was carved out of the 72,000-acre Fort Chaffee — originally Camp Chaffee — established in September 1941. Over the years, the military base was used for combat training, a World War II German POW camp and a relocation center for Vietnamese and Cuban refugees.

When the 1995 Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission recommended the fort’s permanent closure, the federal government leased 65,000 acres to the Arkansas Army National Guard to be used for training, according to the FCRA website, chaffeecrossing.com.

The FCRA was formed in 1997 to oversee the remaining 7,000-plus acres given to local communities for redevelopment.

In August, Chaffee Crossing received the 2012 Base Redevelopment Project of the Year award from the Association of Defense Communities. The ADC cited successful development in the areas of industrial manufacturing, tourism, housing, relationships with regional educational institutions and construction of I-49 as key factors in Chaffee Crossing’s selection for the award.

 

The Missing Piece

Construction of I-49, which will run through Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri, has been underway in various phases for more than 30 years. It’s now complete in Louisiana except for a spur that will run from Lafayette to New Orleans, and it’s mostly complete in Missouri.

In Arkansas, Interstate 540 is ready to be re-designated as I-49, highway officials say. But before that can happen, the connection from Highway 22 across the Arkansas River to I-540 on the west side of Alma must be completed, along with the Bella Vista bypass.

“The completion of this 6-mile section is going to be the impetus that will spur the completion of the Bella Vista bypass and the Arkansas River bridge,” Owen said.

Engineering work has begun for the bridge that will span the Arkansas River, he said, and construction has started on the Bella Vista bypass.

The missing piece needed to connect Highway 22 to I-540 is funding.

While the Chaffee Crossing roadway was partially paid for with federal stimulus funds, the money to link it to I-540 will come through the Federal Highway Administration, ASHTD spokesman Randy Ort said.

“We do not have a timeline for that,” he said. “Funding dictates pace.”

The big gap in I-49 is “really between Texarkana and Fort Smith,” Ort said. “It’s all planned. We’ve got environmental clearances. It’s just a matter of completing design on the individual projects.”

There’s also the matter of getting Congress to appropriate the approximately $2 billion needed to complete the route between interstates 30 and 40.

“I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get the money,” Owen said. “Five years, seven years, it’s anybody’s guess.”

He said the FCRA and Arkansas’ congressional delegation in Washington, D.C., are lobbying heavily to be sure the new U.S. transportation secretary knows about the need for I-49’s completion.

“We’re taking our message to D.C. as often as we can,” he said.