News

Caraker describes narrower Kanuga widening project

By Bill Moss, Published: December 8, 2017

Residents of Kanuga Road heard some good news for the first time in months on Thursday night when Hendersonville City Council member Steve Caraker described a compromise that would significantly reduce the footprint of the $20 million road widening from Church Street to Little River Road.

The biggest reduction in the project’s footprint comes in the city of Hendersonville — from Church Street, around Busy Bend and to Erkwood. Working with NCDOT division engineer Brian Burch, Caraker and two other elected officials — County Commissioner Bill Lapsley and Flat Rock Village Council member John Dockendorf — came up with the compromise that would eliminate 4-foot bike lanes on either side of the roadway, eliminate all but one sidewalk and reduce the travel lanes from 14 to 11 feet.
“All it’s going to do is improve it,” Caraker said. “It’s not going to widen it. The only variable is whether it’s going to be a roundabout (at Kanuga and White).”

The city council wanted a sidewalk on one side of the road from White Street to Erkwood Drive. That survived the scaleback. The bike lanes, grass buffer and sidewalk that made the project so side are gone now. The NCDOT expects to have a revised plan in the spring.

“We basically eliminated 20 feet of right of way acquisition from Erkwood all the way out,” Caraker said. The project will add turn lanes at Crooked Creek, Little River and Erkwood.
“We made the decisions all the way down and gave them a list of everything we’d like for less land taking. We probably saved them $3 or 4 million by doing what you folks want and doing what we would like," he said, adding that the meeting had been "One of the best experiences I ever had with NCDOT working together to get something done."

As part of the discussion, the city and county leaders proposed a separate greenway along Mud Creek from the Publix site to Erkwood. The Henderson County Board of Commissioners agreed on Monday night to apply for a grant to fund a feasibility study of a greenway along a city sewer easement.