“And our purpose, of course, is to follow up with the community on the needs, so we involve the public at every step of this process,” he added.
Sumner said he is pleased to see mostly positive reaction to the possible changes at the “very well attended” public event. He did say this is only Phase 1 of the entire project. Next would be securing both Cleveland City and Bradley County governments’ endorsement.
“This is the planning phase, Phase 1 of three phases,” Sumner said. Phase 2 will be design engineering for the project.
The project would involve a five-mile stretch of road from Benton Pike to the Cleveland Regional Jetport, which will include the roadway both inside and outside the city limits. The city stretch of road would run from Benton Pike to Wilkinson Drive, while the county portion is from Wilkinson Drive to the jetport.
Some of the proposed improvements within the city include adding some medians and managing unsafe left turns. Thus, the portion of Michigan Avenue Road inside the city would be looking at three lanes which would include a center turn lane at specific points.
The urban portion, from Wilkinson Drive to the jetport, would remain two lanes except adding a third lane at intersections.
“We also looked at the potential for a new connection to [U.S. Highway 11], trying to find how this would impact industry and commercial uses along Michigan Avenue,” Sumner stated.
Four alternatives were considered during the planning phase, all north of the Jetport, so they would connect to Dry Valley Road.
Sumner said at the public hearing, one of those alternatives was the most popular, and that consideration was made to not impact residences in that area.
“And the biggest reason was for that [alternative’s selection] was that it didn’t cut across anybody’s front yard,” he said.
Sumner emphasized “this is just Phase 1, and we do have some very rough estimates of what the costs would be,” though those were not included in the report given to the MPO.
The steps for the project were outlined in the presentation, which include an endorsement of the plan by the MPO, then updating the Regional Transportation Plan, then confirming grant eligibility and securing the local match, then obtaining letters of support.
The MPO unanimously endorsed the plan at the Wednesday meeting.
“Now, we will look at [grant] rank eligibility,” Sumner said. “We will probably do an industrial access grant that will be probably be looking at helping us trying to figure out what our costs are going to be and how we can best leverage both state and federal dollars.”
The Metropolitan Planning Organization’s next meeting will be Wednesday, Sept. 13, at the Cleveland Municipal Building.
