YOUNGSTOWN ODOT unveils design for $60 million 711 connector

Construction is to begin in the spring of 2003 and end in 2006.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The 711 connector will be a $60 million construction project including a Gypsy Lane interchange, according to a design presented this week.
The Ohio Department of Transportation displayed the design Thursday at an open house at St. Anthony Church. Plans call for work to begin in the spring of 2003 and be completed in 2006. The public has until Dec. 21 to submit comments to ODOT.
The 31/2-mile four-lane divided highway, which was first proposed 30 years ago and will be funded by a combination of federal and state money, will link I-680 at Salt Springs Road with state Route 11 and I-80 on the Liberty-Girard boundary.
Missing link: "It completes the missing link in the interstate system that's in the local area," said Ralph Hendrick, project manager and an engineer with GPD Group of Akron. The state Route 11 and I-80 interchange was envisioned to receive the 711 connection, he added.
"This completes that, so that you'll be able to make the connection from 680 up to 80 and go east," he said, adding that the 711 connector will also help bring traffic from Youngstown up Route 11 to the new King Graves Road interchange, thereby improving access to Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport.
The 711 connector is important for economic growth in the Mahoning Valley, said Mohamed Darwish, ODOT's Ravenna-based District Four deputy director. "We're trying to work with the locals to bring the jobs back to the valley," he said.
State Route 711, which dead ends at Brier Hill, will be reconstructed; Gypsy Lane and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard will be improved as part of the project; and Burlington Street will be realigned. ODOT drawings of the Gypsy Lane exit show Sarah Street renamed Gypsy Lane. ODOT said the connector is expected to remove nearly 41,000 vehicles a day from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Belmont Avenue and Burlington Street.
Buying up land: Some 360 parcels are to be bought for this project, 65 of them with structures on them. Of that number, ODOT has already acquired 140, including 12 with structures, said Jennifer Richmond, ODOT public information officer.
One of the places where land is to be acquired is Paul's Trailer Park on Trumbull Avenue in Girard. Three trailer park occupants who will be displaced said they think the connector will benefit the community.
But one of them, Darlene Bateman, who has resided in the trailer park for just more than three years, said she and her husband, Ray, probably wouldn't have bought the trailer there had they known they might be displaced by the 711 connector. "It just hit us at a bad time financially because we have nowhere to go," she said.
Mirta Reyes-Chapman of Lafayette Street, a life-long Brier Hill resident and an urban systems engineer with the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments, said that she favors the project and that the connector will make it easier for her relatives from New York and New Jersey to visit her. "I've been waiting for this for a long time," she said. "I think it would bring economic development into the area," she added.
Environmental impact: The project does not cross any lakes or streams and will not disturb Tod Field, a Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority Project in Brier Hill, Tod Homestead Cemetery or the Tod Woods School in Girard, Hendrick said. It will affect only .06 acres of wetlands, he said.
ODOT had previously considered two options, one with, and the other without, the Gypsy Lane interchange. But it decided in favor of including the Gypsy Lane interchange to provide access to Forum Health Northside Medical Center and nearby locations, Darwish said.