Construction projects get city’s backing

Council members express support for city of Buffalo

FAYETTEVILLE — The City Council on Tuesday approved contracts for two major construction projects and expressed solidarity with Buffalo, N.Y., in the wake of a deadly mass shooting.

Council members approved a nearly $3 million contract with Benchmark Construction of NWA for work on Archibald Yell Boulevard southeast of downtown. They also approved spending about $1 million for detailed design work and construction administration services associated with the civic space of the arts corridor downtown. Additionally, the council supported a resolution expressing sympathy for those killed in a mass shooting at a Buffalo, N.Y., grocery store that happened Saturday.

The vote was 8-0 on all three items.

The work on Archibald Yell Boulevard will involve overhauling the intersection with Rock Street and College Avenue, reducing the street from four to three lanes and putting a traffic signal with a pedestrian crossing at South Street. Work could start in late June or early July.

Cars heading north from College Avenue will have a stop sign at the intersection with Archibald Yell and Rock Street, and will be able to go straight through without merging with traffic. A yield sign will meet cars wanting to go north from Rock Street. Southbound cars will have their own left-turn lane. A landscaped median will provide spacing between cars.

The redesign will more clearly define travel lanes for cars and provide better sight distance, Public Works Director Chris Brown said. There have been 77 traffic accidents reported at the intersection in the past five years, an average

of about 15 per year, according to Fayetteville police records.

Archibald Yell from the intersection to where the street becomes South School Avenue will be restriped to have one traffic lane in each direction and a turn lane in the middle. A traffic signal will go in about halfway along the stretch at the South Street intersection, providing a crossing for pedestrians.

The width of the street will not change. The city will be able to change the striping of the lanes if necessary, Brown said.

Council Member Sloan Scroggin said he hoped the work will result in a far safer section of road.

“Sometimes you’re going with a semi or a dump truck and it’s scary,” he said.

The item associated with detailed design of the civic plaza of the arts corridor will have landscape architects Nelson Byrd Woltz follow conceptual drawings presented to voters during the April 2019 special election. The firm also designed the conceptual drawings. The plaza will replace the parking lot west of the Walton Arts Center.

Design work is scheduled to take six months, with construction of the civic plaza scheduled for nine months. Construction work on the plaza won’t start until a new parking deck northwest of Dickson Street and West Avenue is finished next spring, said Peter Nierengarten, the city’s environmental director.

Lastly, the resolution the council supported expresses “the City Council’s sympathy for the innocent grocery store shoppers in Buffalo, New York, who were victims of a horrific racist murderer.”

The text of the resolution lists the names of 10 people who were killed in the shooting, saying they were victims of racial hatred and bigotry.

Council Member D’Andre Jones sponsored the measure. Jones represents Fayetteville on the Race, Equity and Leadership council of the National League of Cities, and said he intends to present the resolution to the member organization and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown in a showing of solidarity.

Jones’ fellow council members thanked him for bringing forward the resolution.

“It’s important we call out evil where we see evil,” Scroggin said.