Rutherford Weekly

Page 2 - Rutherford Weekly 828-248-1408 www.rutherfordweekly.com Thursday, November 30-December 6, 2023 Webber added: "It's hard enough to get a car through there, much less walk." "You take your life in your hand when you walk across that intersection," Mayor Mickey Bland of Spindale added. Just because there's no safe way across, however, doesn't mean people don't have to make their way across. A Food Lion, the area's main grocery store, is also at this intersection, leaving pedestrians on the opposite side no safe way to get there. A big portion of the $20.4 million grant will go into this intersection, creating a roundabout, coordinating traffi c signals, adding crosswalks, and building separated pedestrian crossovers. "It's going to help correct one of the biggest, traffi c congested areas in the county," Bland said. ---THE GRANT--- The shape of the overall design came together in 2018. Town offi cials knew the problem, they had a plan. They just didn't have the money. The towns and the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) tried for years to get the funding needed to address some of the issues, but they never got enough, or got promises that fell through. "We've gotten a couple intersections that were funded and then unfortunately became unfunded with some budget issues at the department," said Hannah Cook, the NCDOT planning engineer for the area. "It's been fi ve or six years of planning, pursuing funding from multiple sources." When the new RAISE funding became available through the infrastructure law, Barrick and Webber had the same idea at about the same time. They agreed to work together, thinking that one plan to solve two towns' problems might appeal to the grant's decision makers. Barrick and Webber gave their project a name that seemed fi tting: PARTNERS (Partnership for Active Regional Transportation and Neighborhood Equity in Rutherfordton and Spindale). The plan received bipartisan support in Congress. Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican, played a big role in getting the funding approved, vouching for the plan and writing letters to the US Department of Transportation, which was ultimately the fi nal decision maker. The total funding for the project will also include $1 million in separate federal funds, $2.3 million from state funding, and just over another $1 million in local funds. Now, instead of trying to solve one problem at a time, the towns can take care of them all at once. "It was a jigsaw puzzle that we were working to kind of put the pieces together," Webber said. "And what the RAISE Grant allowed us to do is glue all of those jigsaw pieces together into one cohesive project." In a preview of what's to come, Spindale completed a separate "streetscape" project in 2022 along several blocks of Main Street. Foot traffi c for the businesses along this stretch has soared, Webber said. The grant will allow the towns to replicate that success, Webber said. ---SOME SERIOUS DOMINOES--- The funding has a fi rm deadline. The money has to be spent by 2027, Cook said, and the fi nal construction completed in a decade, though it is likely it will be faster. That's a timeline beyond the wildest dreams of the previous approach. "The piecemeal way doesn't guarantee the next domino," Mayor Jimmy Dancy of Rutherfordton said. "You might get one domino on the front, you might get one domino in the middle, you might get one domino on the end, but they're not all going to fall. This allowed all the dominoes to fall." Most of these dominoes are pretty big. The completed project's traffi c fl ow improvements will save the town's commuters more than $5.6 million over 20 years, the grant application said. When everything is in place, if an ambulance leaves Spindale for an emergency, the traffi c lights will stay green all the way down the corridor. Buses will no longer have to make awkward, time-consuming turns on narrow streets or go blocks out of their way. And with a new safe passage between the separate Thermal Belt Rail Trail and Purple Martin Greenway, the bicyclists who took 100,000 trips on the trails in 2021, will be able to pull into either town for lunch or a drink. Working together worked, the town leaders said. "Neither one of us would've gotten any funding if it wasn't for us going together on it," Webber said. Dancy agreed. "Had we done it separately, we'd still be talking about it," Dancy said. The grant also frees the towns up to spend their own money in other ways. "This will certainly help save the town of Spindale a lot of money that we can spend on other projects," Bland said, "and will get this project completed in approximately a four-year span which may have otherwise taken 30 years." Dancy added: "Without funding you're just dreaming. The grant takes that dreaming part out of it, and allows us to start talking about reality." 'We have to have good working relationships' The towns' sense of cooperation did not begin with the grant proposal, Barrick said. They are both old mill towns in the cradle of the state's textile industry. Cooperation was built into the town's survival plan. "A lot of times we hear from folks outside of our area who ask, 'How do you guys work so well together?,'" Barrick said. "Honestly we have to, if we want to be able to do better for our communities and do better for our citizens, we have to have good working relationships." As Barrick spoke, a fi re engine blared its signal out on Main Street, heading south. It stopped briefl y at the intersection just down from Rutherfordton's town hall, then turned left on Charlotte Road, the beginning of the corridor set to be remade, heading toward Spindale. It could have been a fi re unit from either town, on its way to any fi re or emergency in the area. Because the towns, though they have separate fi re departments, work in tandem. A fi re in Spindale is a fi re in Rutherfordton. "We're two small towns with two small staffs in rural western North Carolina," Barrick said. "Our ability to act as if we are a major metropolitan is diffi cult. And so when challenging times come—and those challenging times can be storms, they can be pandemics, but they could be breakdowns—our ability to work together is critical." He added: "Does it matter what the side of the truck says when your house is on fi re?" The corridor project is monumental, and the federal funding made it all possible, and now each town's fi re department will soon have an easier time getting to a fi re, whichever side of the McDonald's it's on. But the display of two towns working together is another benefi t of the grant and the process, Dancy said. "If we can encourage our citizens to work together like we do," Dancy said, "what a most enjoyable neighborhood we can have." He paused, then continued. "Regardless of whether the sign says Spindale or Rutherfordton, it's my neighbor." Spindale's new streetscape. Downtown Rutherfordton Park. CONTINUED FROM FRONT PAGE. 139 West Main Street, Spindale 828-447-3410 3 BUSINESSES. 1 LOCATION. 3 BUSINESSES. 1 LOCATION. Beer, Wine, Mocktails & Small Bites Tue & Thu 4-8 Fri 12- 8 Mon, Wed, Thu, Fri Lunch 11-2 & Dinner 4-8 Sat & Sun 12-8 Closed Tuesdays Offering a variety of coffees, teas, juices, smoothies & morning food items. Open Weekdays 6:30am-8pm ©Community First Media Community First Media

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