The public will get its first chance to get a glimpse at the James Hardie Industries manufacturing plant project proposed for Crystal City – or at least, some of the roads that will lead to it – at a public meeting tomorrow.
The Jefferson County Public Works Department will hold the open house-style meeting from 5-7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 7, in the Performing Arts Center at Jefferson High School, 7 Blue Jay Way, in the Festus area.
The meeting, Public Works Director Jason Jonas said, will focus on the first half of the county’s plans to improve access in and around the proposed $400 million manufacturing plant to be built on the former Festus Memorial Airport property.
As part of the negotiations to land the project, the county and Crystal City agreed to improve roads to the site. Those two entities entered into intergovernmental agreements with each other earlier this year that set up the county as the project manager.
Jonas said the Dec. 7 meeting will deal with the first phase of what’s referred to as Project Redbird – a code name given to the Hardie negotiations before the plans were disclosed to the public.
“It’s the part that’s the easier one to do,” Jonas said.
The first phase will involve improvements to Airport Road, Calvary Church Road, Castle Acres Road, River Cement Road and Hwy. 61 near its I-55 interchange.
“This first phase doesn’t involve as much right-of-way acquisition or negotiations with the railroads,” Jonas said. “It just involves road reconstruction work, but quite a lot of it.”
On Airport, River Cement, Castle Acres and Calvary Church roads, a new base will be installed to handle the heavier loads from a constant stream of large trucks, and those roads will be resurfaced with asphalt.
In addition, Castle Acres Road and parts of Calvary Church Road will be widened to 26 feet from the current 18 to 20 feet.
“That way, there will be two lanes that can accommodate truck traffic,” Jonas said.
There’s also a proposed left turn lane to be built from Hwy. 61 onto River Cement Road at the I-55 interchange.
“There’s roughly 3 1/2 miles of road improvements in this phase,” Jonas said.
He said the two engineering firms working on the project – Crawford, Murphy and Tilly and Horner and Shifrin, both of St. Louis, will have representatives at the Dec. 7 meeting, along with presentation boards on the projects.
In addition, Jonas said, a short slide presentation will be shown continually, and the findings of a traffic safety study will be discussed that evening.
Bids for construction on the first phase should be awarded in early February, with work expected to start in the spring and end in the fall of 2024. Partial closures are expected during construction, he said.
The final phase of the project, Jonas said, will involve building a bridge across Plattin Creek to merge Calvary Church and Castle Acres roads and create an outer road along I-55, as well as work on VFW Road and an access road into the new plant.
Jonas said another public hearing will be held as those plans proceed, with bids awarded by September 2024.