New Palmer artery in the works

DAWN De BUSK/Frontiersman reporter

PALMER - The city of Palmer plans to punch Dogwood Avenue through to the Glenn Highway and beyond, looping it around to the Palmer-Wasilla Highway and creating the beginning of a new east-west corridor for the growing area.

"We want to (build this road) to facilitate good traffic flow," Sara Jansen, Palmer's community development coordinator, said Thursday. "Right now, the main east-to-west thoroughfare is E. Evergreen, which becomes congested. There's no more right of ways to expand that road without seriously impacting business, so we're looking at Dogwood Avenue as another east-to-west road that would facilitate entry into the downtown Palmer area."

Currently, Dogwood Avenue runs between Alaska and Cobb streets. According to the designs, Dogwood Avenue would be extended between Palmer's U.S. post office and Fred Meyer, to the Glenn Highway, where a traffic signal would be installed, according to Judy Dougherty, design section project manager for the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities.

Dougherty said DOT is handling the construction and utilities portion of the Glenn-Dogwood intersection project, which is expected to cost $2.4 million.

Dogwood would then continue behind the Pioneer Square Mall, which houses Carrs. Although it is not depicted in designs drawn up by Hattenburg Dilley & Linnell and inspected by DOT, city planners envision Dogwood continuing behind the mall and connecting to the Palmer-Wasilla Highway.

The Dogwood extension would provide an access road to Carrs while the existing exit/entrance ramps from the Glenn Highway to Carrs would be obliterated.

Another part of the project involves eliminating the left-turn lane to Pioneer Square from the Palmer-Wasilla Highway's east-bound traffic lanes.

Two turn lanes for eastbound vehicles on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway onto the Glenn Highway would accommodate additional traffic.

When Bogard Road is eventually extended east to the Glenn Highway, the new traffic signal at Dogwood Avenue and the Glenn Highway would assist with coordinated traffic flow, without affecting traffic flow on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, Jansen said.

"You definitely need to be looking at a five- or 10-year horizon," Jansen said. "We need to get ahead of the curve," she said.

The two things the city needs to resolve in order for construction to begin this summer are obtaining right of way from one property owner who owns a two-acre tract of unsubdivided property behind Carrs and west of the Glenn Highway, and asking DOT to move funding already set aside for construction from 2006 to 2005.

Design plans for the Dogwood Avenue extension were handled by the city of Palmer; the city hired HDL to create the plans, which are 95- to 100-percent complete, Jansen said.

"It's to Palmer's credit, they have a city plan. If you don't have that kind of planning, you can end upwith a real rat's nest," Dougherty said.