City, historic Black community divided over Gulfport’s $45M road plan. Here are the maps.
Everyone agrees that something needs to be done about the traffic congestion on U.S. 49 north of Airport Road and the drainage problems near Forest Heights development, but the City of Gulfport and a members of a historic Black neighborhood are at odds over the solution.
The third of four public meetings on a $45 million Gulfport connector road was held Tuesday at the Isiah Fredericks Community Center in Gulfport.
The format for this meeting was an open house, where residents and business owners could watch a video on the proposed roads, study the maps and renderings, get answers from the engineers at Neel-Schaffer who designed the project and fill out comment cards.
A fourth meeting is scheduled for the summer.
“In doing a community assessment we looked at where our greatest needs are,” said Mayor Billy Hewes, “and we’ve heard from the public saying ‘you have to do something about the congestion on both north and south sides on Interstate 10 and 49.’”
The city’s solution has changed and evolved several times, he said, as the city listened to suggestions and objections from residents.
The road plan from Gulfport
Here is the latest plan:
▪ The new 1.4 mile road would begin as an extension of Airport Road on the west side of U.S. 49. It would turn north and have several offshoot roads.
▪ One section would connect to Factory Shop Boulevard to Gulfport Premium Outlets, connecting Canal Road to Creosote Road
▪ Airport Road would overpass I-10 and continue to a circle
▪ Traffic could go east to Daniel Road and the restaurants and shops
▪ Traffic could also go west toward Canal Service Road and the Sportsplex and Gulf Islands Waterpark
Hewes said the new road will provide access and connections between communities north and south of the interstate.
It will be the first road to incorporate a bike path and pedestrian path that goes over I-10, Hewes said, “so kids can bike to the Sportsplex, the waterpark and back back and forth.”
Another advantage, he said, is improved emergency response.
“It’s bad enough just being stuck in traffic, and it causes its own hazard as it backs up onto the major interstate and onto 49,” he said. “But also if there’s an emergency situation, and our first responders can’t get there. Bad things can happen. It is just flat out dangerous.”
The roads would be built on vacant land, creating opportunity for commercial development.
A component that’s been added to the project is a retention pond to help with drainage in the Forest Heights area.
Gulfport has $20 million in federal dollars, Hewes said. The city has obligated money for the project and is asking the state to pitch in, he said.
The opposition
Opponents of the project set up tables and maps across the room from the official displays at Tuesday’s meeting, offering The Community Plan.
“The community wants growth,” said Katherine Egland, co-founder of Gulfport nonprofit the Education, Economics, Environmental, Climate and Health Organization. “There are much better options,” she said, than the road as proposed by the city.
“We started this petition when we found out about the public meeting,” she said. They collected 350 signatures on the petition before they came to the meeting to present it, she said, and more people added their names to the petition Tuesday night to ask the city to look at other options.
Councilwoman Ella Holmes-Hines, in whose ward the road is located, is not in favor of the city’s latest plan.
Most specifically, she is opposed to the 64-acre retention pond. All the roads will be built at grade level, she said, which will cause more storm water runoff in an area that already floods.
Holmes-Hines said she wants the city to wait on the road and plan it in conjunction with the Forest Heights levee, even if that project is three or four years away from starting. The study by the Army Corps of Engineers will take at least 18 months, she said.
“My goal is to protect these 200 families,” she said of those who live in Forest Heights.
If the city builds a road, she wants traffic only northbound, she said. By allowing commercial development and bringing more traffic down from north of I-10, “All you’re doing is creating bigger chaos,” she said.
The alternate plan
The Community Plan has been around since just after Hurricane Katrina. It puts the road east of U.S. 49 and west of Cowan Road, said Derrick Evans, founder of the Turkey Creek Community Initiatives and a sixth generation resident of Turkey Creek.
It would be about 5 miles, he said, and “All but about a mile of it already exists.”
The plans call for connecting U.S. 90 up to Dedeaux Road north of I-10, he said, collecting traffic from the many east-west connector roads such as Airport Road and Seaway Road. This is the plan:
▪ Road begins at Hewes Avenue at the beach
▪ Continues up Washington Avenue, which becomes Rippey Road
▪ Build a short bridge across Bernard Bayou
▪ Create a new exit 35 on I-10, halfway between U.S. 49 and Cowan-Lorraine Road
▪ Continue north and connect to Three Rivers Road
Evans said this road is entirely outside the Turkey Creek Watershed and would provide much more direct access to the Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport, Mississippi Aquarium and Centennial Plaza.
The vision for Gulfport
Mayor Hewes said the levee for Forest Heights is a separate project and is continuing to move forward. Any any new development that will come along the new roads will have to go through the same rigors with with the Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency as the city is going through in the planning of the road, he said.
“So nobody gets a free pass,” he said “These concerns have been voiced and we’ve taken it to heart.”
Hewes said, “We will not be successful if we improve one component of the city and harm another. There’s no benefit in that to anybody.”
Consideration has been given to the residents in the Turkey Creek watershed, he said, and particularly with the forest Heights community.
“We’ve instructed the engineers to go back to the drawing board a number of times to say this cannot create harmful effect from flooding to any of this area,” Hewes said.
But a property owner in the neighborhood disagrees.
“It’s not a good fit for Forest Heights. There are alternatives,” said Jerry Pryor, who owns property in the Forest Heights area. She said the plan is ecologically not a good fit and the city needs to do better.
Websites for more information
The city’s plan: interconnectinggulfport.com/
Community Plan: leahmahan.com/comehellorhighwater/wp-content/uploads/docs/F11_08-26_CommunityPlan.pdf
This story was originally published March 31, 2022 at 10:23 AM.
