Wal-Mart still stuck at red light on traffic issues

The store's opening was moved back about six months.
By ED RUNYAN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
BAZETTA -- State and Wal-Mart officials are discussing a new traffic flow -- the third such proposal -- for the Wal-Mart Supercenter planned for next year, just a short distance from the current store.
Meanwhile, a company official says the groundbreaking and grand opening have been moved back about six months. The planned original opening date was March 2007.
Ron Mosby, Wal-Mart senior manager for public affairs, said groundbreaking is now set for November, which will push the grand opening back to fall of 2007. He said the delay was caused by routine construction obstacles. He would not talk specifically about the reasons.
Wal-Mart plans to build a 203,819-square-foot supercenter on the 24-acre site on Elm Road behind the Warren Harley-Davidson store and Four Seasons Car Wash. Plans call for it to sell groceries and have a gas station, in addition to the services available at the store on the other side of state Route 82.
Jennifer Richmond, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Transportation District 4 office in Akron, said the agency and Wal-Mart had worked together on two different traffic plans in recent months, but those are both on hold.
A possible solution
Wal-Mart officials are negotiating with those who own property in front of the Wal-Mart location so it can gain access to Heaton-North Road. Wal-Mart had planned to use Millennium Boulevard as its access road, Richmond said.
Heaton-North Road is the access road for the Four Seasons Car Wash and Warren Harley-Davidson store. It dead-ends in front of the Harley-Davidson store, and a private drive takes traffic the rest of the way to the Harley-Davidson store.
Richmond said state and local officials had hoped early on that Wal-Mart would use Heaton-North Road because it would allow traffic to move through an intersection at Heaton-North and Hoagland-Blackstub (also known as Bazetta Road) that is now plagued with traffic problems.
The two roads are not perfectly aligned with each other and have no traffic signal. Officials have said a traffic light at the intersection would fix the traffic problem and provide a good access point for traffic going to Wal-Mart and the other businesses.
Richmond said ODOT was willing to install traffic lights at Millennium Boulevard and/or Hoagland-Blackstub but will now wait for Wal-Mart's negotiations to be completed to proceed. Wal-Mart will be paying for the signalization and any other lane additions needed for the project, she said.
Richmond said additional right-turn lanes are likely to be built on the northbound exit ramp from state Route 82 to Elm Road and on Hoagland-Blackstub Road turning southbound on Elm.
If a new access road is built at Hoagland-Blackstub and Heaton-North, no turn lane or traffic light would be needed at Millennium Drive, she said.
In February, Bazetta Township Trustee Michael Piros and Four Seasons owner Jeff Bell had said building Wal-Mart's access road at Millennium Boulevard might worsen traffic flow problems at Heaton-North and Elm.
runyan@vindy.com