The Arkansas Highway Commission on Wednesday designated sections of Interstate 540 and U.S. 71 in Northwest Arkansas as Interstate 49, officially linking it to a long-planned, 1,700-mile corridor between the Gulf of Mexico and Canada.
Three other sections of U.S. 71 south of Alma - in the Fort Smith area and mainly south of Texarkana - also will be designated as I-49 once they receive Federal Highway Administration approval, state highway officials said.
The announcement of the commission approval came at a luncheon in Little Rock hosted by Northwest Arkansas interests to mark the awarding in February of a $52.7 million contract for a 6.4-mile section of the Bella Vista bypass from Interstate 540 west, the first project to be let under a $1.8 billion construction program voters approved in November 2012.
The latest Bella Vista bypass project is the first of three projects that are scheduled to be awarded contracts this year under the program, which the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department has dubbed its Connecting Arkansas Program.
The road construction program is being financed, in part, by a temporary statewide half-percent sales tax that is supposed to be in place for 10 years under a constitutional amendment that voters approved in November 2012.
The Bella Vista bypass is being constructed initially as a two-lane road to reduce congestion on U.S. 71. When fully realized, the bypass will reach into Missouri as a four lane, limited-access highway as part of I-49.
Nearly 700 new I-49 signs costing about $70,000 will begin going up next week on 65 miles of I-540 north from Alma to Bella Vista. Sections of the Bella Vista bypass that now are under construction or planned will have signs dually designating it as Future I-49 and Arkansas 545.
“Even though we’ve talked about it for years, it never really existed in Arkansas until now,” said Scott Bennett, the director of the state Highway and Transportation Department.
A section of U.S. 71 south of Fort Smith now being built to interstate standards on a new route will be called Future I-49 once federal approval is given. Construction is scheduled to be completed this year.
Two segments of U.S. 71 from the Texas state line north of Texarkana heading south to Doddridge and then to the Louisiana state line also will be called I-49 once federal approval is granted.
The Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials approved the designations last fall.
Construction of the Bella Vista bypass was key, said commission member Dick Trammel of Rogers. “It means a lot to the whole state because that’s going to end up being a part of I-49,” he said.
The designation of the I-49 route, particularly north from Fort Smith, is going to “transform west Arkansas and sets us up well for the future,” said Mike Malone, president and chief executive officer of the Northwest Arkansas Council, a private, nonprofit organization established to foster economic development and education and infrastructure improvements in the region.
The designation of I-49 wouldn’t have happened without the Bella Vista bypass, he said.
“Together they provide the linkage,” Malone said. “The I-49 designation, which Missouri already has, … will be in northern and western Arkansas. It’s a symbolic linkage. But when the Bella Vista bypass phase gets built, then it’s physically linked and then we have a multistate interstate corridor with a big gap south of Fort Smith.
“But from Fort Smith north, you have an interstate northbound all the way to Winnipeg, Canada, … all the way to the Great Lakes. It’s going to help us with industrial recruitment to attract industry that need to be at or near the interstate system.”
The I-49 designation also reflects of the growth of western Arkansas, Malone said. Northwest Arkansas soon will welcome its 500,000th resident, he said, and the Fort Smith area has another 250,000 people.
“Three-quarters of a million people and great businesses over on the western border of Arkansas are all going to benefit from I-49 even with the gap remaining to the south,” he said.
Ric Clifford, chairman of the Rogers-Lowell Area Chamber of Commerce, a veteran Wal-Mart supplier executive who now works as a consultant, was among the 50 people attending Wednesday’s luncheon. Like others, he said the route, particularly when the Bella Vista bypass is completed, will help freight, but it also will help tourism and commuters.
“The ability to move freight more efficiently will be good in terms of being able to move trucks in and out to Wal-Mart [distribution centers] north and south,” Clifford said. “Because we have so much going on with outdoor activities in Northwest Arkansas and southern Missouri, I think there’s the potential to unclog that [U.S] Highway 71 corridor, where people are going to the rivers and trying to do the tourist attractions, to make it easier to get in and out of that whole Bella Vista area, where you go from Bentonville up.
“In the morning, you can’t move going south. In the evening, you can’t move going north. This will relieve a lot of that.”
But any momentum created by Wednesday’s announcement isn’t enough to close that 180-mile gap between Fort Smith and Texarkana, at least in the near future.
“It’s a big gap, and the dollar amount to close the gap is going to be difficult to achieve,” Malone said. “We need to work on it, but it’s going to take a while and it is such a big gap, it’ll be several more years. Hopefully, we can chip away at it like we did with the Bella Vista bypass.”
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 04/17/2014