City continues 7^th Street extension effort

Big trucks no longer rum­ble down 7^th Street, leav­ing a wake of grav­el dust that set­tles on cars and hous­es in the qui­et neigh­bor­hood. That’s because their des­ti­na­tion, Gate Precast Company, closed five years ago. 

However, the City of Winchester is still pur­su­ing a street exten­sion project that has been a pri­or­i­ty for decades because truck traf­fic is still an issue along anoth­er near­by res­i­den­tial street. 

Large trucks use Magnolia Street off Maple to access the Freeman Corporation’s plant, which man­u­fac­tures hard­wood veneer. 

In addi­tion to alle­vi­at­ing the truck traf­fic prob­lem, offi­cials believe the project would ben­e­fit the city by spurring com­mer­cial devel­op­ment near the inter­sec­tion of Maple Street and Veterans Memorial Parkway, just south of the I‑64 interchange. 

And anoth­er rea­son they want to con­tin­ue the project is that the city and state gov­ern­ments have already spent too much time and mon­ey on the project not to fin­ish it. 

City Manager Mike Flynn, when asked recent­ly about the con­cern of a for­mer city offi­cial that the city needs to use the mon­ey or it will lose it, said he doesn’t think that will happen. 

“We’re so far down the line now,” he said. “You nev­er say nev­er, but we’re at a point in the project where nei­ther the state nor the city wants to lose the funds that have been expend­ed on this project, and they’re going to act accordingly.” 

Currently, the project is sched­uled to be com­plet­ed in December 2027, but Flynn said that, real­is­ti­cal­ly, it will prob­a­bly take at least anoth­er year. 

It is also like­ly to end up cost­ing more than the orig­i­nal $4.45 mil­lion esti­mate, he said. 

When the project first began, the main con­cern was that grav­el trucks had to go through the nar­row 7^th Street neigh­bor­hood to Gate Precast’s plant, which man­u­fac­tured pre­fab­ri­cat­ed con­crete for struc­tures. But in 2021, the com­pa­ny announced it was clos­ing the plant at 101 N. 7^th St., one of Winchester’s old­est fac­to­ries, because it was con­sol­i­dat­ing its Winchester oper­a­tions with those of its oth­er nine loca­tions, at Ashland City, Tenn. 

However, fund­ing had already been allo­cat­ed for the 7^th Street exten­sion, with the city’s match expect­ed to be $800,000. The city bud­get­ed $300,000 but antic­i­pat­ed also using $500,000 from the state’s Rural and Secondary Road Program dis­cre­tionary fund. 

The state approved $240,000 for the orig­i­nal project design, which was com­plet­ed on a pre­lim­i­nary basis. 

Working with the Transportation Cabinet’s District 7 office and Palmer Engineering, offi­cials got CSX to approve a rail­road track cross­ing and got all the per­mits required from state agencies. 

In ear­ly 2021, it was deter­mined that there was a $246,500 short­fall and that the city would cov­er that cost. 

At that time, Flynn said, it was deter­mined that a sig­nif­i­cant part of the cost of the project was asso­ci­at­ed with relo­cat­ing water and sew­er lines, gas lines, and oth­er infrastructure. 

“It was well over half of the cost of the project,” he noted. 

So, in 2024, the city com­mis­sion asked Palmer Engineering to look at a redesign of the project to elim­i­nate some of that relo­ca­tion work, and the com­ple­tion date was extend­ed to Dec. 31, 2027. 

Palmer Engineering is work­ing to obtain the FEMA flood study infor­ma­tion that is required, and they’re hav­ing to recre­ate part of that to sub­mit to “the prop­er author­i­ties,” Flynn said. 

The city man­ag­er said the District 7 office has reviewed the right-of-way plans, and Palmer is con­tin­u­ing to work on the drainage analy­sis and get appraisals for the right-of-way acquisition. 

The hard part of the puz­zle, Flynn said, is going through the legal process nec­es­sary to obtain the right-of-way nec­es­sary to extend the corridor. 

It was made even hard­er, he said, by changes in the last leg­isla­tive ses­sion regard­ing emi­nent domain and reg­u­la­tions, which length­en the process. 

“If we can get the right-of-way, I believe the project should move along expe­di­tious­ly,” he said. 

From the city government’s per­spec­tive, Flynn said, the exten­sion “is still, I think, a very much need­ed state project.”