Maumelle to upgrade scenic road

Plan for wider street, bike lanes on riverfront scaled back

Living along a bumpy, narrow stretch of Crystal Hill Road in Maumelle longer than anyone else, Janet Watkins has long advocated for improvements that city officials say are finally on the way.

"I'd just like to see a decent road, so a car can meet a truck or a school bus without having a head-on collision," said Watkins, who said she has lived along Crystal Hill Road for 52 years. "You can't meet a big vehicle on it without pulling off onto the grass."

Maumelle voters approved a bond issue in 2012 to widen the road that winds along the Arkansas River south of Maumelle Boulevard. The city's plans for a four-lane road stalled over the years, somewhat because of concerns about whether the original vision was the right one, Mayor Caleb Norris said.

The city's current plan is for about 1½ miles of Crystal Hill Road within Maumelle's city limits to be widened to 36 feet, with two 10-foot-wide traffic lanes and 8-foot-wide bicycle lanes on both sides. The remaining mile on its eastern end enters Pulaski County and North Little Rock jurisdictions.

"There were several reasons we scaled it back," Norris said during a public meeting last week at Maumelle's Park on the River. Attendees could look at architectural drawings and maps and ask questions about the project.

"There was a concern about cars going really fast, then hitting the narrow road again," said Norris, who was elected Maumelle's mayor in November after four years as its city attorney. "We've been at 90% of the plans for awhile for a four-lane road. The people who lived along here didn't want a four-lane road. We already had an issue with speeding."

Downsizing to the current plan, with some spots of landscaped median along with the bike lanes, will be more aesthetically pleasing and will also save the city about $1 million in construction costs from the $3.23 million bond issue city voters had passed seven years ago, Norris said.

Eric Holloway of Holloway Engineering, the firm responsible for planning the road, said during the public meeting that Maumelle could advertise for bids in about eight weeks.

The road improvements will add to the already scenic nature of the road, Holloway said, which includes unobstructed views of riverfront homes across the river in Little Rock and the Interstate 430 bridge. And the bike lanes will connect to the Arkansas River Trail.

There is also the gated Riverbend housing development facing the river -- which added a wider westbound lane and curb at its entrance -- and the nearby River Pointe and The Villa apartment complexes, and the under-construction Villa Towers that have increased pedestrian and vehicletraffic on the road.

"The mayor wants [street] lights now, too," Holloway said. "There are power poles over there. If we're going to beautify it, let's beautify it."

At the public meeting, Holloway joked with Watkins that she was the force behind changing the city's plans to create a calmer traffic area.

"Maybe I just yell louder than anybody else," Watkins said. "I mean, it doesn't go anywhere. It's like 2 miles. We just didn't need that [four-lane plan]. It would be a lot of road that goes nowhere."

The road layouts shown at the public hearing drew compliments from Denise Wilson, a Riverbend resident for the past two years.

"I think it's a beautiful road," she said of the design. "Having a median will help cut down on the speeding. People do still go fast on it despite the potholes. And the bike lanes are something people are going to enjoy. I think it's a great plan."

Others representing members of the Bendemeer Grotto, 10850 Crystal Hill Road, a nonprofit fraternal organization, said the plans displayed didn't allow enough of a driveway for lodge members to get on and off of the road. The lodge is next door to Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, where a larger drive is shown on the plans.

"The only thing we see is that we don't have access to our driveway," Tommy Allen, the Grotto's monarch, said while looking over the drawings. "We'll be boxed in for both directions. From our driveway, we'll have no way of going back to the left coming out."

Allen said the lodge has been on Crystal Hill for about 20 years. The membership received a letter asking for a utility easement on its property but now won't be needed, he said. He wasn't aware of the new plans for the road until the meeting, Allen said.

"This is the first we've seen of it," Allen said. "We just have a lot of questions. Why are they doing all of this? We just question why."

The improvements will only be for Maumelle's portion of the road. The rest will remain a multi-patched, roughstretch of pavement with no shoulders, at least for now.

North Little Rock has "nothing definitive" planned to improve its portion of that section of Crystal Hill Road, city Chief of Staff Danny Bradley said. But, that could change, as Norris said he is scheduled to meet with North Little Rock Mayor Joe Smith soon about the road.

"It's on the radar," Bradley said of any road improvement.

Metro on 07/15/2019

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