That means travel time should be less than it was six years ago, the last time the championship was played in Pinehurst. The four-laning of part of existing U.S. 1 and a brand-new bypass of Vass and Cameron could even be completely finished.
If the contractor, S.T. Wooten Corp. of Wilson, finishes enough of the work to allow vehicles to use the new highway, with all signs and markings completed for travel by June 10, the company will get a $1 million bonus payment on top of the $41.1 million construction contract awarded in 2003, according to Lynn Sanderson, highway administrator for the N.C. Department of Transportation.
The contract calls for a completion date of Sept. 11, 2005. But in an effort to have the work finished in time for the Open, which will be held June 13-19, the DOT agreed to offer a bonus payment for extra-early completion.
“Occasionally, we do have jobs that do need to be completed in a certain time frame,” Sanderson said in a Friday telephone interview.
Although the DOT doesn’t make a practice of giving bonuses like this, completing the U.S. 1 project in time for the U.S. Open will benefit the state’s economy, because the championship is an internationally televised and attended event, Sanderson said.
Wooten has had workers on the job for longer hours during warm weather and stands an excellent chance of getting the bonus by the June 10 date stipulated in the contract to have all travel lanes and bridges ready for use in time for the start of the Open in Pinehurst, according to Marty Tillman, resident engineer for Division 8 in Sanford.
“This isn’t a gift,” said G.R. Kindley of Rockingham, a member of the state transportation board who represents the division that includes Moore County. “He must take from his bonus expenses incurred by having extra equipment on the site, extra employees, longer working hours to get the job done.”
Kindley said the “bonus’ had been agreed on at the start of the work.
Wooten submitted the low bid in fall, 2002. But the job wasn’t actually started until several months later when a lawsuit aimed at stopping the project filed by an environmental group and property owners in the area was dismissed in court.
Although Wooten might have to put on the final layer of asphalt and close part of the roadway after the week of the Open, the company will get the bonus as long as traffic can use it during the week of the Open, according to Philip Watts of the NCDOT construction unit.
Final Four-Lane Link
The 12.5 miles from Lakeview in Moore County and Quail Ridge Golf Club south of Sanford in Lee County is the last stretch of two-lane blacktop of U.S. 1 between Moore County and Raleigh. The completion of the long-awaited widening of U.S. 1 will bring the Research Triangle and the Sandhills a little bit closer, and mean much to the local economy long after the Open is history.
While the work will be suspended during the time of the U.S. Open June 13-19, no travel lanes will be closed, according to Marty Tillman, resident engineer for the multi-county Division 8.
“We don’t see any reason why it can’t be ready on June 10 to put traffic on it,” he said in a Thursday interview. “We’ll have it substantially completed. If it rains constantly from now until May, no. But we shouldn’t have any problem meeting our June 10 goal to put traffic on it with no lane closures the week of the golf tournament.”
Tillman said the project is on schedule.
Tillman isn’t likely to forget this project, among the many he is responsible for in this district.
Every time he sits at his desk in a small building in Sanford, he stares at a large blue, white and red 2005 U.S. Open logo affixed to the spartan white wall.
The Moore County towns of Vass and Cameron will be bypassed as part of the completion of the final stretch of the federal highway. The bypass features some picturesque scenery, he said.
When completed, the bypass will allow drivers to avoid the two-lane remnants of the highway, although the two-lane segments will remain and be maintained except for a small stretch between the bridge over Little River just north of Vass to the railroad overpass. That section will be removed, he said.
There will be 12 bridges that cross streams, creeks, other roads and railroad tracks along the route, according to Tillman.
The bypass begins just below the bridge north of Lakeview, where a new bridge is being constructed within sight of the existing road. It will carry traffic through previously pristine rural farmland and wooded areas in a loop that will take the four-lanes with median around the present downtowns of Vass and Cameron and into Lee County, where it will rejoin the existing route, which is already four-laned.
To get to downtown Vass or Cameron, motorists will get off the new bypass at an appropriate marked exit.
The final bridge construction is the main part of the work necessary, as well as the laying of pavement on the parts where the bridges and the highway meet, he said.
Opponents Fight Bypass
Land was cleared months ago, the first visible evidence that the much-anticipated project was finally becoming a reality.
The rest of U.S. 1 from Sanford to Raleigh is four-laned with a median.
The project has been on the drawing boards for years, but was further delayed when environmentalists and other opponents fought to halt the bypass from being built through previously undeveloped farmland and rural areas of Moore County. The legal battle ended in defeat for MooreForce and several individuals whose property would be divided or condemned by the project.
A pending civil suit is still under way in Moore County between owners of private property through which the bypass would go and the DOT over the amount of money the state is offering the property owners.
However, that hasn’t stopped the work.
The total cost of the project is expected to be about $60 million, including right of way acquisition, supervision and related design and other fees, according to Bill Jones, a spokesman for the N.C. Department of Transportation.
So far, 85 percent of the paving is done from Lakeview north to the CSX Railroad Company at the Moore-Lee County line, Tillman said.
“The contractor is trying as best he can to have it all finished, including the final layer, on June 10 so he won’t have to come back after the Open,” he said.
The bypass and related work is expected to touch off a long-term burst of growth and development in Moore County by reducing travel time between here and Raleigh for potential commuters and visitors.
Many expect a bedroom community role to develop for Cameron and Vass, offsetting any anxieties about economic damage to the downtown that is currently accessed by the old two-lane route.
