Last beltway segment in new road plan, but other projects get delayed

Source: By Wesley Young at Winston Salem Journal
 

 
A new draft of the state’s road-construction bible includes the final segment of the Winston-Salem Northern Beltway, but many important road projects previously planned now face delays.

The document, called the 2020-29 draft State Transportation Improvement Program, or STIP, will be put into final form this summer when it is approved by the N.C. Transportation Board.

Significantly, the draft STIP moves the final segment of the beltway, between Interstate 40 and U.S. 158 on the southwest side of Winston-Salem, from the “unfunded” category to a category projects starting construction in 2029.

“You lose some, you gain some,” said Pat Ivey, the division engineer for the N.C. Department of Transportation in Forsyth County, describing how an ongoing process of evaluating road projects can shuffle the mix from one plan to the next.

The state is currently operating under a road plan covering the period 2018-27, but the plans are revised every two years in a process that puts each potential road project through a data-driven analysis of need on the state, regional and local levels.

Projects in the latter half of the 10-year window are particularly vulnerable to shifts, because of changing data and priorities.

It’s worth while stepping back to look at how all the beltway segments are faring:

Some projects listed in the current plan for future construction have moved into the unfunded part of the list in the 2020-29 draft:

Ivey said some of the projects may come back onto the list as others are completed. He said the delay of many projects is due largely to two factors: rising costs when other projects move up the list and get more accurate cost estimates; and the re-evaluation of projects as part of the state’s prioritization process.

New projects coming to the list, all scheduled for construction in 2027, include:

Ivey said some important projects besides the beltway will remain on the list.

A project to widen I-40 from the Business 40/I-40 split in Guilford County to the U.S. 311 intersection in eastern Winston-Salem will be delayed but is now on the list in its entirety.

The start of construction has been pushed back from 2026 to 2029. But the good news is that all the segments of the project are on the same timetable. Ivey noted that under the current plan, only two segments of the widening project were scheduled to start in 2026. The segment from N.C. 66 to the I-40/Business 40 split in Guilford County was unfunded.

Work on all three segments is scheduled for 2029.

Medline Industries wants to open a 660,000 SF Distribution Center

Source: By Fran Daniel at Winston Salem Journal
 

 
Medline Industries, a Chicago-based manufacturer and distributor of medical supplies, wants to open a 660,000 SF warehouse distribution center in southeastern Forsyth County NC that could at maximum capacity employ 400 people.

“It will be essentially a healthcare supply-chain center,” said Dmitry Dukhan, the vice president of real estate for Medline Industries.

Medline will start out with 100 full-time workers, said Dukhan, but the hope is to get to 400 employees within seven to 10 years.
“It’s hard to predict,” he said. “Obviously, we have to earn the business trust of local customers, but we’re going to start with a regional distribution first.”
He said the company is hoping to grow and add value to the community.

Property owners Raeford Kirkman, Lynn Hayes and Inez Motsinger are asking the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners to rezone 92.7 acres from agricultural to limited industrial — special use for the project. The property is on the northeast corner of Wallburg and Sherlie Weavil roads, across from Union Cross Business Park.
The City-County Planning Board voted unanimously to recommend approval of the petition last month, and Forsyth County commissioners were briefed on the proposal Thursday.
The commissioners will hold a public hearing on the rezoning Jan. 24 and are expected to vote on the petition then.

So far, Medline has not asked for county incentives, but it could still do so.

The property owners’ petition includes a request for special intense development allocation, known as SIDA. As a result, future development must use stormwater controls based on Unified Development Ordinances requirements.

Currently, two single-family homes and accessory buildings are on the land, which is a combination of farmland and heavily wooded areas.

Aaron King, director of City-County Planning and Development Services, said that a land-use plan previously identified about 250 acres across from Union Cross Business Park as a potential spot for another industrial park.
The rezoning request for the Medline project is within that acreage space.
Proposed plans call for a new public road off Wallburg Road to provide an access for the site.

About Medline

Dating back to 1910, Medline is a privately-held, family-owned company with about 20,000 employees throughout the world and more than 550,000 products in its portfolio. The company had sales of more than $10 billion in 2017.