A major milestone for regional economic development as well as making the city’s access to the 120 Bypass more robust will be marked Thursday, Aug. 25, with the official groundbreaking for the long-awaited McKinley Avenue interchange.
The ceremonies will take place at the corner of McKinley Avenue and Daniels Street at 9 a.m.
The interchange was first envisioned in the mid-1990s.
“People need to understand it takes years to get a project like this moving forward,” said Manteca Mayor Ben Cantu. “There is planning, environmental hurdles, and funding issues. You just don’t say you want (an interchange or major infrastructure) and then get it built within a year or so. It doesn’t work that way.”
Cantu noted he was a city planner in 1996 when Manteca annexed the area where the interchange is being built.
The interchange project will allow several things to happen:
*It will take pressure off of the Airport Way corridor.
*It will serve more than 3,000 plus homes in southwest Manteca.
*It will access a major business park employment center approved by Lathrop on he northwest quadrant of the interchange.
*It will improve traffic circulation to Daniels Street that serves the 120-acre family entertainment zone anchored by Big League Dreams and Great Wolf resort between Airport Way and McKinley Avenue.
The option that Great Wolf has to buy city land to possibly build an additional 200 rooms can’t be exercised until construction starts on the McKinley Avenue interchange.
The project is being funded with $12.3 million in state funds, $7 million in Measure K funds collected from the countywide half cent road and transportation tax, and well as $8 million the city has collected in growth fees for major road endeavors..
DeSilva Gates Construction was awarded the bid of $23,387,387 to build the last interchange built on the six-mile 120 Bypass.
When completed there will be five interchanges with a mile between each — Yosemite Avenue in Lathrop as well as McKinley Avenue, Airport Way, Union Road and Main Street in Manteca. They are all bookended by the interchange with Interstate 5 on the west and the interchange with Highway 99 on the east.
The groundbreaking means there will be two major interchange projects underway within a five-mile stretch. Caltrans is targeted to go to bid later this year or in early 2023 for the first phase of the $154 million revamp of the 120 Bypass/Highway 99 interchange.
The first phase of the 99/120 project will add a second transition lane to southbound Highway 99 from the 120 Bypass interchange. It also involves tearing down the existing Austin Road interchange on Highway 99 to accommodate additional freeway lanes.
The replacement overpass for Austin Road will be four lanes. It will also span the railroad tracks requiring connecting street work from Austin Road to Atherton Drive as well as a new crossing alignment for Woodward Avenue to reach Moffat Boulevard.
The city two years ago completed a revamp of the Union Road interchange as California’s first diverging diamond. The plan is to eventually to do the same revamps at the Main Street and Airport Way interchanges.
The McKinley project will create a partial cloverleaf designed to eventually be expanded to a full cloverleaf as traffic warrants.
The big price cost for the project is the need to import dirt to construct the ramps on as the freeway at that point was elevated using dirt to elevate it out of the flood zone of the San Joaquin River.
McKinley Avenue as it passes under the freeway will be widened to four lanes.
The interchange will have metered ramps for congestion control.
It will take pressure off of the Airport Way interchange to provide access to more than 3,000 homes in four different developments that have started or are about to do so in southwest Manteca. Without it, all of the traffic generated from the new homes would have to funnel through the Airport Way interchange.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
