Highway 265 Project Posed Challenge for Animal Clinic

The last leg of the four-lane widening of Arkansas Highway 265 is complete. Motorists can now enjoy a nice drive from Huntsville Road in Fayetteville all the way north to Randall Wobbe Road in Springdale.

But that last little stretch of the project, the two miles between Joyce Boulevard and Ivey Lane, seemed like it took forever. And it kind of did. According to the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department, the $9.4 million project, a figure that does not include right-of-way and utility relocation, took 240 working days.

Since the original contract was for 220 working days, 20 more might not seem like a lot. But right in the middle of the mess sat Crossover Animal Clinic, and for months and months on end — 27 of them, in fact — employees and customers had to dodge orange barrels, navigate lane changes, endure scraping, grading and paving before life returned to normal. It was a real pain in the you-know-what.

Whispers couldn’t help but think of state highway commissioner Dick Trammel, who’s fond of saying, “When you see orange barrels, just have patience because it will get better.”

He was right, and amen to that.