‘Let’s go’: South Main overhaul set to begin

By GEOFFREY WOEHLK | The Forum

MARYVILLE, Mo. — At a meeting in July of last year, City Council member Rachael Martin spoke for all the city officials in attendance after the council voted to formally approve a $10.5 million grant from the federal government for the South Main Corridor Improvement Project. “Let’s go,” she said excitedly. After nearly a decade of planning, and then with added delays and uncertainty from a global pandemic tacked on just before shovels were set to turn dirt, the massive infrastructure overhaul that will transform 1½ miles of South Main Street in Maryville is getting underway.

When it’s complete, the stretch of South Main from the U.S. Highway 71 bypass to South Avenue will see numerous functional and aesthetic upgrades, including:

• Replacement of the traffic signals at the South Avenue and State Route V intersection

• New traffic light at a realigned north entrance to Walmart

• Realigned access points to and from business along the corridor

• Enclosed storm sewer system

• Moving overhead power lines underground

• Decorative lighting

• Landscaping

• Wayfinding signage

• 8-foot bicycle/pedestrian path on the west side and a 5-foot sidewalk on the east side

City Manager Greg McDanel told The Forum that construction will likely begin in March, starting with utility relocation.

All told, the project — easily the largest and most ambitious infrastructure overhaul in the city’s history — could be completed within about 24 months or so.

Pictured in Dec. 2018, then-Maryville Mayor Rachael Martin and City Manager Greg McDanel attended a ceremony in Washington, D.C., for federal BUILD Grant recipients shortly after being awarded the $10.5 million grant. The grant funding allowed the project’s timeline to shrink from about 10 years to around two.

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During construction, McDanel said that all properties along the road will continue to be accessible, and South Main itself will remain open to two-way traffic. Work along the three-lane corridor will be done one lane at a time so it can continue to be used.

Although there are certainly challenges left on the road ahead, the path to construction in 2021 — which started nearly a decade ago in 2012 — has already jumped over several hurdles.

Perhaps the largest was securing the funding, most of which was obtained through a $10.5 million federal BUILD grant, awarded in 2018.

Without the federal help, McDanel said the project was going to be paid for by city taxpayers from the capital improvement sales tax, and would have had to be broken up into three phases across at least 10 years. Each would have cost about $4 million.

But just a month and a half before applications were due for the highly competitive, nationwide grant program, city staff and the Northwest Missouri Regional Council of Governments started work on an application for a federal BUILD grant — a U.S. Department of Transportation program that awards discretionary funds for capital improvements in cities and towns across America. The program is similar to its predecessor, the TIGER grant program, to which McDanel was no stranger — he was part of a successful bid for one in 2011 as city administrator of Cherryvale, Kansas.

Nonetheless, on an extremely tight timeline and an expectation to push phase one forward in 2019, the odds weren’t working in the city’s favor.

“It was a hopeful prayer that we could get it,” McDanel said of the process last year.

After winning the grant, the city will only need to kick in about $3 million for the project — a far cry from the initial expected outlay.

And city officials worked feverishly over the past year with businesses and other property owners along the corridor to ensure access during construction, and to help design the new entrances and exits that they hope will improve traffic flow and, most importantly, safety — especially at the McDonald’s entrance just off the intersection of South Main and South Avenue, which McDanel has said is the most dangerous in the city.

By the end of 2021, Maryville citizens should start to see the beginnings of what the massive new overhaul will look like, and head into 2022 with an eye toward a whole new look for those entering the city.

One of the aesthetic goals of the South Main Corridor Improvement Project is to move overhead power lines underground.

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What the Taco Bell area near the intersection of South Avenue and South Main will look like with power lines moved underground.

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