Partly cloudy early with increasing clouds overnight. Low 57F. Winds light and variable..

Partly cloudy early with increasing clouds overnight. Low 57F. Winds light and variable.

The Tennessee Department of Transportation has altered plans for the Interstate 65 interchange project at Buckner Road partly in response to plans for the June Lake development.

Spring Hill’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen unanimously approved a newly requisite change order submitted by TDOT to add a subterranean, pedestrian culvert to the project. This amounts to a proposed tunnel to run beneath the interchange itself, adding over half a million dollars to the project to be paid from a pre-established, $4-million contingency budget expensed from the Capital Projects Fund. It is slated to be fully reimbursed by Buckner Lane Partners, LLC.

The necessity of the expense stems from the master plan for June Lake — a 775-acre, mixed-use development from Nashville-based Southeast Venture — incorporating into its design a 3,100-foot greenway trail. The Greenway was approved by the Municipal Planning Commission earlier this month, and last week, Mayor Jim Hagaman and aldermen approved TDOT’s change order to accommodate the greenway component of the June Lake project as a sort of pedestrian tunnel-underpass.

City staff attributed the need for the culvert to considerations “for continuous flow and safety precautions.”

TDOT also submitted another change order — which the city declined — besides that of the culvert for a modification of the originally proposed, controlled access fence planned to serve as the barrier for the TDOT right-of-way at the interchange. The proposal would have changed the six-foot, galvanized chain-link fence into a black, vinyl fence, which would have added about $128,600 to project expenses.

The fence alteration would have necessitated a maintenance agreement between the city and TDOT for the life of the vinyl fencing whereas the originally proposed, galvanized steel fencing does not require the city to enter into any such agreement.

The general contractor involved with the project is Bell & Associates Construction, headquartered in Brentwood. The company executes labor related to the federal Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development grant contract Spring Hill holds through TDOT.

Since its inception in 2019, the project has represented what then-Mayor Rick Graham called “a time race” to widen Buckner Lane’s two lanes to five and thereby optimize it for the interchange’s future. The estimated cost at the time to complete the Buckner widening from Thompson’s Station Road East to Duplex Road is around $8.6 million.

The interchange is expected to be finished by 2025 if not 2024, yet the widening of Buckner Lane could not reasonably be completed within that time. However, a two-lane road is ill-equipped for the the level of traffic flow represented by the future interchange’s design.

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