story co-written with Abigail Quinn
Part 3 of the serial of stories published in The Sylva Herald on Jan. 31 edition
The R-5600 N.C. 107 expansion project is a major project talked about for years and years. The reconfiguration is along 2.6 miles of roadway and will bring wider lanes, bike lanes, sidewalks and a grass median in some segments of the new road. The primary purpose has been described as modernizing the roadway with special attention to safety while driving on the road and walking the sidewalks.
The project starts just before the Innovation Brewery in Sylva with a new sidewalk, all the way to Lovedale Road past CVS and Fairview Memorial Gardens.
It will have a new stormwater box culvert, and the project is still going under revision because the work will be bigger than expected when they discovered that there are two streams, Mill Creek and an unnamed tributary going under the road. Buildings and businesses from Pizza Hut to the first entrance to Lowe’s will be impacted and might have to relocate.
This early 1970’s river pipe network must be replaced with this project.
This project will also include moving the utilities.
“We also have to relocate the existing utilities, utilities being those that are underground and those that are overhead on the power pole. And so in order to move them out and away to a widened road, we have to purchase the land in order to move them out,” said N.C. Department of Transportation Project Director Jeannette White.
White estimates that already 60 percent of the land to move these utilities has already been purchased.
This work will be performed before the work on the road begins in the summer of 2025 and is to be finished by 2029.
152 properties
Kevin Mahoney, an attorney with the N.C. Eminent Domain Law Firm and former NCDOT lawyer, said that there are “152 parcels that are impacted according to DOT and of those, the expected relocations are 20 commercial relocations and seven residential relocations.”
Mahoney, who has practiced eminent domain litigation for many years is partnering with Sylva lawyer Jay Coward of Coward, Hicks and Siler, who has been a critic of the R-5600. They represent 22 of the property owners losing land in this project.
“DOT has filed condemnation against several of our clients and we have gone to court to withdraw the deposit for them, but we’ve not yet gone to court to try any of these cases because they’re still very young in the process,” Mahoney said.
Not coming back
Coward estimates that half of the business district in this stretch of the road is going to be eliminated from the local economy.
“Most of the businesses that have been destroyed so far are not coming back,” Coward said. “And so that was one of the principal concerns I have is you know, as a citizen of this local community, that this project was ill conceived, but I failed in that effort to get the DOT to stop it.”
“Because Sylva is not very large land wise … some of the businesses, even though within Sylva, may relocate just slightly outside of the town limits, but it still appeals,” White said.
Found a place in Sylva
Some businesses like Jackson County Veterinary Associates have a lot to consider for the move. The veterinary office has been serving the community for over 50 years explained Diana Jones, the office manager.
“Right now the holdup is the state,” she said. “Them getting back with us about buying the real estate. And then we will get a hold of our relocator who works for the state. It’s not a simple thing for a medical business. We are a veterinary clinic … we have to get with the DEA and get our papers changed to the right address, get the state people to come in, get the X-ray people to come in. So it’s not an overnight thing like the state thinks it is.”
Patients they serve will also find the change particularly taxing as they have to adjust from one location to another, she said.
“We will be on Skyland Drive, hopefully by the end of the year. It’s really up in the air,” Jones said. “I’ll be retired but I’m so glad my employees will still have a job … we were so scared because we couldn’t find anything. There was nothing nearby.”
Though she was grateful for the state provided relocation assistant, she couldn’t help but wish things would move faster. They had been on the hook and ready to move on and off for seven years, she said.
Unlike the veterinary office, Tagged Out Hunting Supply is able to keep their location but anticipates losing several feet off of the front of their business. Soon, their business may be right up against the newly reconstructed road, sacrificing the entrance and awning to the building.
“They aren’t taking our property,” said Dustin Hayes, owner of Tagged Out. “We don’t really have any way to prepare. It’s just going to have to be one of those things where we deal with it when it comes.”
Additionally, since the building itself is not being demolished in the expansion process Tagged Out did not receive any additional monetary or physical assistance from the state.
“They’ll pay for the property but outside of that, no,” he said. “What I do think is going to happen is that those people who are left in business will end up having to pay the taxes of everyone else that got kicked out. It’s gonna cost them I promise you … someone’s gotta pay for it.”
The construction is anticipated to conclude in 2029 according to DOT plans. However, the project from East LaPorte to Tuckasegee that was started in 2016 was supposed to be finished by 2020. Currently, it’s three years over schedule. Based on that example it is assumed that the timetable DOT is currently working on for N.C. 107 could be shortened or extended.
Related stories: N.C. 107 work: A long road behind, and ahead
N.C. 107 work leads to revenue decline for Sylva
Bryson Jusko and Jake Harkey contributed to the story. The story is produced as part of collaboration with The Sylva Herald and supported by small grant from the Center for Community News.
