Louisville residents file comments on TDOT project as deadline approaches

With a day left to comment on the proposed TDOT renovations to Louisville Road, staff at the town of Louisville said more than 200 people had filled out comment cards at town hall Wednesday afternoon, April 17. The project, which has a budget of $21 million, is intended to accommodate traffic from the nearby Smith & Wesson plant.

Jeff Muir, director of communications for the Blount Partnership, told The Daily Times that the proposed changes from the Tennessee Department of Transportation are part of the deal brokered to bring the firearm manufacturer to Blount County. TDOT, he said, has ownership of Louisville Road, also known as State Route 334, and the department can modify the road as it wishes.

No one filed an application for the work, he said.

“All Smith & Wesson asked was that the substandard Louisville Road to Topside Road be improved to handle existing traffic,” he wrote in an email Wednesday. “The Blount Partnership told TDOT about the request and TDOT agreed to upgrade the road as part of Smith & Wesson locating to Partnership Park North.”

Road work ahead

Louisville elected officials began urging residents to fill out comment cards earlier this month, saying the proposed changes to Louisville Road represented a crossroads for the small community. On the one hand, town Mayor Jill Pugh wrote in a letter to Louisville citizens, is the opportunity to be a town focused on its residents. On the other hand, there is the possibility of becoming a pass-through to businesses and apartments constructed at the town’s borders.

The proposed improvements to Louisville Road would widen lanes to 12 feet between Proffitt Springs Road and Topside Road, adding a 6-foot shoulder with a curb and gutter.

TDOT staff told The Daily Times Tuesday that the work would reduce crashes and improve stormwater drainage, making the road safer overall. Construction, TDOT Regional Communications Officer Mark Nagi said, is slated to begin in 2027. The typical construction time for projects like this is 24-30 months.

Nagi said it’s too early to tell the specifics of the right-of-way access and its effects on private property, but satellite images attached to the project show the proposed right of way impacting multiple yards.

The road work would affect access to businesses and the Louisville Post Office, Pugh said.

Representation

The project surprised many Louisville residents, who Pugh said first heard of the proposed changes in a TDOT public meeting on March 28. After the town Board of Mayor and Aldermen passed a resolution opposing the work April 9, Pugh said she’d like the opportunity to work with TDOT and arrange something mutually beneficial.

That’s something her predecessor, previous Louisville Mayor Tom Bickers said he would have liked as well. He first heard of the project when it was announced as part of the Smith & Wesson relocation in 2021.

“By the time we got involved, it was, ‘Smith & Wesson is coming, we’re making these improvements, here’s the traffic study and we have no choice but to make these changes,’” he said in a phone interview Wednesday. After opposing the deal, he said he would rather make the best of it and help the town prepare for what was to come.

Meeting minutes from November and December of 2021 record how Bickers updated the town BMA about the extent of the proposed work and discussed the effect on Lovingood Way — an area inside city limits that was affected by the industrial park’s swap from Alcoa to Maryville.

The land, which Bickers said was initially part of Louisville, was de-annexed from the town so it could be used as an industrial park under Alcoa zoning. It was later de-annexed again and absorbed by Maryville so it could be connected to the city’s sewer system — something he noted was initially supposed to come to Louisville as a result of Smith & Wesson’s arrival.

Bickers, who later served on the Coordinating Committee for the company’s arrival, gives credit where credit is due. After he expressed his displeasure to the county Industrial Development Board, he said organizers kept him and the town engineer in the loop.

“It was still in engineering, but we already knew they were going to widen Louisville Road,” he said.

Some of Bickers’ concerns he said he voiced in 2021 are still shared by Pugh. She’d like TDOT to conduct a noise pollution study and wants to know if an environmental impact study has taken place. She’d also like to see estimated traffic counts for the road.

“If we’re going to have a shoulder all the way to the greenway, people are going to be riding their bikes and they don’t need cars near there,” she said. “These are conversations we should have had to begin with.”