Road closure coming for Howell Mill Road
Howell Mill Road won’t be an option for those planning to drive the length of the Waynesville route for the rest of the summer.
On July 20, the section from Vance Street to Happy Hill Road will close completely for 45 days while a roundabout goes in at the intersection with Vance Street. That means that people using the Waynesville Recreation Center will have to get on Vance from the end that starts at Walnut Street. Those headed to the Evergreen Packaging Plant will have to get there via the Old Asheville Highway and Sonoco Plastics will be accessible only from Russ Avenue. People who live in the closed section will be able to get to their homes, but it will be closed to through traffic.
The road closure is just one stage of a multi-year, $11.6-million N.C. Department of Transportation project to improve Howell Mill Road.
“The overall goal of the project is to change the alignment of the existing Howell Mill Road,” said Nathan Tanner, assistant resident engineer and project manager. “The road will be shifting and widening in several locations in order to straighten the road out and take out some of those existing steep spiral curves.”
The contractor for the roundabout has 45 days to finish the project, after which the road section will reopen. One more road closure of similar length — though without the precise time limit of the roundabout project — will be necessary before the project is complete. The roadwork for that closure includes a new bridge over Richland Creek where it crosses south of Evergreen. Crews are now pouring its deck, and once railings are installed the road will closed from Happy Hill Road to the Old Asheville Highway so crews can tie the road to the new bridge.
Originally, the completion date for all work save the landscaping was Oct. 15, 2016. But “things are progressing nicely,” Tanner said, and it’s quite possible Howell Mill could be done a good bit before that. Currently, they’re running about 30 percent ahead of schedule.
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“If everything goes well and we don’t run into any unforeseen problems,” Tanner said, the project could be done as early as May 2016.
As to budget, he said, there have been a few design errors that required some additional expense, but things should come in pretty close to the original $11.6 million estimate.
“It’s kind of hard to say right now, but we should be pretty close to that,” he said.
