DATE: Wednesday, August 27, 1997            TAG: 9708270541

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAC DANIEL, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   61 lines

OAK GROVE CONNECTOR, LONG AWAITED, COMMENCES WITH A CEREMONIAL SHOVEL

Construction has at last begun on this city's 2 1/2-mile missing link.

After 16 years of waiting, city and state officials broke ground Tuesday for the Oak Grove Connector, the 2 1/2-mile, four-lane highway that will eventually link local interstates with the Great Bridge Bypass and its proposed cousin, the Chesapeake Expressway.

It's been a long time coming. Ever since the bypass was completed in 1981, Chesapeake officials have anticipated the day when traffic would flow smoothly between Interstates 64 and 464, Norfolk and North Carolina's Outer Banks. Under current road conditions, Chesapeake is the bottleneck along these routes.

The $39 million connector - part of the city's 1994 road bond referendum - is expected to be completed in the spring of 1999. To date, it is the city's most auspicious road project, as well as its most important.

Under a state highway administration that wants to do more using less state money, half of the Oak Grove Connector's bond debt will be paid off using local recordation taxes - fees collected when real estate sales are recorded at the local courthouse. The other half of the funding will be paid by Chesapeake via a contract with the state.

Legislation for the road's funding was first approved by the General Assembly in 1993. It is the first road project in the state to be funded using this method. In all, the road will be paid for using 100 percent local money.

Bids for the project resulted in an interest rate of 5.25 percent, the lowest achieved for such a project in the state's history, said Secretary of Transportation Robert E. Martinez, who was on hand Tuesday to praise the project and dig some ceremonial dirt.

The road will run from the Dominion Boulevard interchange at Interstates 464 and 64 and head south then east toward the Great Bridge Bypass, which also will be improved.

The connector is expected to eliminate congestion on Battlefield Boulevard and the two-lane Great Bridge Boulevard. Seven single-family homes and two barns will be displaced by the project. Fifteen acres of tidal wetlands will also be ruined but will be replaced through the creation of new wetlands elsewhere in the city.

Chesapeake officials are still negotiating a final comprehensive agreement with Parsons Brinckerhoff and J.A. Jones, the New York City consortium hired to privately build the proposed $125 million Chesapeake Expressway. It would roughly parallel the alignment of the current Virginia Route 168, or Battlefield Boulevard, and would be a toll road.

If this project is built, all three roads will form a 16-mile link between North Carolina's Outer Banks and Chesapeake's interstates.

Chesapeake's Battlefield Boulevard is a narrow, two-lane road that is often a congested nightmare during the summer. At more than 30,000 vehicles per day on weekends - three times the road's capacity - traffic to and from the Outer Banks often comes to a standstill. ILLUSTRATION: Virginia Secretary of Transportation Robert E.

Martinez, at podium above, joins Chesapeake Mayor William E. Ward

during the groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday for the Oak Grove

Connector, a four-lane roadway awaited for 16 years. The ceremonial

shovel stands in the earth, at left, as the dignitaries proceed with

the program.

D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/The Virginian-Pilot

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