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Access Road Work in Benwood May Cost $2 Million

Photo by Joselyn King Benwood Police Chief Frank Longwell shows two proposed plans being considered for an access road into Benwood’s industrial park.

BENWOOD — Plans to extend an access road further into Benwood’s industrial park are likely to cost the city about $2 million.

The Burgess and Niple engineering firm of Parkersburg has crafted three options for continuing an access road in the park to keep truck traffic out of Center Benwood, while opening up a back section of the park for expansion.

“What this will do is unlock this development property here,” said Police Chief Frank Longwell.

Longwell said more than 70 acres in the park is available for use.

The property has multiple owners, including the CSX Corp. and the Regional Economic Development Corporation of Wheeling.

More than a 100 trucks a day drive through Center Benwood to enter the park, and Longwell said the city’s ultimate goal is to for all truck traffic to have direct access to all parts of the park from W.Va. 2.

The city has already started on the first phase of the project, which is to extend the existing access road coming from W.Va. 2 into the park another 2,100 feet to property owned by CSX. Phase 1 is expected to cost about $400,000, and the city is seeking state funding for the work, according to Police Chief Frank Longwell.

City officials next must decide where to take the road from that point, and two of the three options are cost effective, he said.

The least expensive would put the access road straight through CSX property about 1,100 feet to the unoccupied section of the park. The construction plan comes with an initial price tag of about $1.8 million, which doesn’t include the cost of buying or leasing the right-of-way from CSX.

The second option would loop around to the rear of the industrial park using the CSX rail loop and extend the road by about 2,200 feet. This plan would cost about $2.5 million, according to the engineers.

The third proposed plan would have involved using the existing Bellaire Bridge ramps to bring trucks in and out of the industrial park from W.Va. 2. The estimated price would be $8 million to $10 million.

“It would be too costly,” Longwell said. “We would have to construct an overpass, and there’s no way.”

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