Proposed project could bring $24M upgrade to Airways Boulevard
JACKSON, Tenn. — If you’ve ever biked, walked, or rode in a motor vehicle on Airways Boulevard in Jackson, you might’ve encountered frequent difficulty when traveling up and down the road.
“We had a public input meeting for the RAISE grant,” said Jennie Keel, CEI Supervisor at TLM Associates. “It’s a federally competitive grant that provides transportation improvement opportunities for cities and states across the country, and in that public input meeting, we just discussed rebuilding Airways.”
The RAISE grant’s cap is $25 million, with TLM Associates asking for $24 million to completely reconstruct Airways Boulevard.
“So it’s a full mile of Airways from West Lafayette, where King Tire is, all the way down to the bypass,” said Keel. “We’re going to rebuild all of Airways from the dirt up, so we’ll tear out everything that’s there and replace it.”
They hope to install bikes lanes, curbs and gutters, sidewalks, and landscaping — anything to make the environment more walkable and accessible.
“We chose Airways Boulevard because it needs the most reconstruction, and it’s going to require full depth reconstruction. It’s not just a pedestrian improvement, we can’t just go out there and add money to overlay it with asphalt. That’s what we’ve done for years,” Keel said.
Keel says this reconstruction would not only benefit the Airways area, but the entire downtown community as well.
“That is also our western entrance into the downtown corridor. And so we wanted to make sure that that’s inviting with all of the new investments going downtown, with the Blue Oval and the airport and the industrial park being out west, that’s just the corridor into our booming downtown. And we wanted to make sure that we have the pedestrian and vehicle infrastructure in place to support the growing downtown area,” said Keel.
As of now, it’s a waiting game. TLM Associates says they will hear back in September if they’ve been selected for funding.
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