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Council agrees to amendment for L-C Road Interchange/Kinnamon Bridge project study

By Jim Buice
For the Clemmons Courier

Sidewalks, roads and interchanges took center stage in Monday night’s Clemmons Village Council meeting.

In addition to agreeing to a first amendment of the Lewisville-Clemmons Road interchange/Kinnamon bridge project study and approval of a paving bid for the Market Center Drive Phase 1B project, the council directed the manager to move forward with a Harper Road sidewalk project from Fair Oaks Drive to Morgan Elementary School.

In a sidewalk discussion item added to agenda prior to the meeting, councilman Mike Rogers said: “As we’ve been laboring to get some projects completed and started, I would like to suggest that we start a project between Fair Oaks Drive and Morgan Elementary. There are sections that are started to Novant Health to put the crosswalk in at Village Point Drive, and the sidewalk does come around to their property on Harper Road headed towards I-40. It’s a fairly flat area and a limited number homes to be impacted by right of way.”

Council members Michelle Barson and Mary Cameron immediately agreed they would be interested in pursuing the proposal.

“Particularly this one,” Cameron said, “because it does connect up with something that is already there. There’s a large population on that side of town. There a lot of things that people can walk to. It just makes sense.”

Mayor John Wait said that this project makes “a lot of sense to me with the issues we have on U.S. 158 and those issues still continue — not to mention the fact that this council already approved a resolution encouraging DOT to revive the 158 widening project, which I do think that project falling off the list is something that hopefully DOT will reconsider. We’ve always talked about that project, the sidewalk project and the road project.”

Rogers made the motion to “get the ball rolling” with the Harper Road sidewalk project, and the council gave unanimous approval.

Also in Monday night’s meeting, the council agreed to an amendment to the intergovernmental agreement between the City of Winston-Salem and the village for a feasibility study regarding the I-40 interchange and exploring the possibility of connectivity with the Kinnamon Road bridge.

The original $100,000 study, which was approved in August 2019, included $80,000 in Surface Transportation Block Grant — Direct Attributable (STBG-DA) funds through the Winston-Salem Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization and a required 20% local match from Clemmons of $20,000.

Buffkin said Monday night that $100,000 now “would not really cover much of a comprehensive study, so we had to look at that again” — with the amended figures of $160,000 from the WSUAMPO and local match of 20% ($40,000 from Clemmons) for a total of $200,000.

Planner Nasser Rahimzadeh added that “the study as it moves forward would mostly be just data gathering and then some analysis.”

Buffkin said in the initial agreement a couple of years ago that this was approving to do a study with a minimal investment from the village to see if the Kinnamon Road bridge could be a feasible part of the new I-40 interchange as a way “to create some ingress/egress access at Kinnamon and as a way to take some of the traffic off of Lewisville-Clemmons Road.”

He added that Kinnamon would unlikely ever be able to serve as a full intersection because it’s only about a half-mile from the Lewisville-Clemmons Road exit off of I-40, which is too close for DOT standards for distance between major interchanges.

“But at least if we can generate some type of access there to take some of the pressure off of Lewisville-Clemmons Road, that’s what the study will tell us if it’s possible,” Buffkin said.

In another item on the agenda, the council approved a bid of $469,451 from Yadkin County Paving for the Market Center Drive Phase 1B project.

Mike Gunnell, Public Works director and village engineer, said that only one bid was received for the project. The original bid was $553,315, which Gunnell said exceeded the engineer’s estimate and that several items were deleted to get closer to the budgeted amount. Yadkin Valley Paving agreed to accept the changes.

Later in the meeting during the attorney’s report, Elliot Fus said that the owner of the Shipley property, a commercial property to the east of Wells Fargo, agreed to the right of way in the Market Center Drive project — and that the village did not have to take legal action in the matter.

In other highlights from Monday night’s meeting, the council:

• Approved a resolution authorizing the advertisement for upset bids for the sale of real property at 2838 Harper Road for 14.7 acres of land purchased more than decade ago and now declared to be surplus. Village Manager Scott Buffkin said that the town paid close to $593,000 and change, including the commission, for the land. The village has set the floor for a minimum bid of $600,000 for consideration.

• Approved purchase orders for a leaf vacuum truck from Carolina Industrial Equipment ($219,126), a John Deere loader from James River ($105,628, including a trade-in) and Cooper Ford pick-up truck ($39,377).

• Heard from Shannon Ford in the marketing/communications report that now is the “perfect time” to come to the Farmers Market on Saturday mornings at the Jerry Long YMCA with “all the fresh produce rolling in.” She added that there will be a Movie Night in the Village on July 23 when The Sandlot will be shown at the Jerry Long Family YMCA. A variety of food trucks will be in place by 7:30 p.m. with the movie starting at sunset.

• Received a quarterly update from Wes Kimbrell, stormwater engineer.

• Heard from Steve Gearren, Public Works director of operations, that the village recently received a favorable OSHA Comprehensive Inspection Report with no violations and no fines.

• Was reminded that the Peter Clemmons House Historic Market Presentation will be held next Wednesday, July 21, at 10 a.m.