Last Edited:
December 29, 2022 @ 8:47 am
Approximately 80 Montgomery County residents attended the Rossview Road Preliminary Design Public Meeting held by the Montgomery County Government Engineering Team on March 29 at Rossview Middle School. The purpose of the meeting was to share the preliminary design for the widening of Rossview Road from International Boulevard to East of Kirkwood Road and gain public input about the draft plan. Sharing the preliminary design package was the first public step of many steps within the plan development process. The next steps are to evaluate public comments and make the necessary adjustments that can be made.
In advance of the meeting, the engineering project team worked to reach out to all property owners that surrounded the project via a notification letter in the mail three weeks prior to the meeting and used multiple news and social media outlets with the intention of notifying as many people as possible. The extra effort that went into reaching out to those who might be impacted by the expanded roadway resulted in an above-average turnout for a public hearing of this type.
There are approximately 70 individual properties that will be impacted in some way by this widening project. Under the current preliminary design, three houses would be impacted enough to require a full purchase of the homes. The entire project is scheduled to need approximately 15.6 acres of new right of way and permanent drainage easements to complete the widening. These are preliminary plans that the design team is already reviewing in relation to the public comments that were received from the first public input meeting. The team will continue to work on the plan for the next few weeks and will be in further communication with the property owners who will potentially be affected.
Montgomery County Mayor Jim Durrett stated, “This is a complex project. We have the need for more schools in that area of the County but we also know that once the new high school opens, Rossview Road will reach capacity in its current state. The new middle school is opening this August. As part of the school construction, we had to bring utilities to the site. We have a roadway project that is turning a two-lane road into a four-lane road with a center turn lane in preliminary design. There are multiple things happening at the same time. We do not want to spend the time and cost to install a utility this month and turn around in a year to relocate it.”
The Rossview Road widening project is in the unincorporated area of Montgomery County and is a joint effort and responsibility between Montgomery County Government and the Tennessee Department of Transportation.
“There were concerns from some property owners at the public hearing regarding their property. The County’s Chief Engineer and I have engaged with those property owners through phone calls and emails and we have a meeting set up with them next week,” added Mayor Durrett.
The planning process will take at least until the end of this year to complete with updated plans and more public meetings planned throughout that timeframe.