Route 16 widening winds down to cheers, groans

By David Carkhuff

Love it or hate it, the widening of the North Conway strip is done.The finishing touch to the $6 million highway job is installation of new stoplights. Hurricanes threw a kink into these plans because the devastation in Florida put stoplights at a premium, so installing new ones for North Conway may take a few months.But Roger Williams, project manager for Settlers' Green Outlet Village, said contractor George R. Cairns and Sons of Londonderry wrapped up road and sidewalk work in North Conway just in time. Crews completed their two years of work last month, before winter set in and the ground froze."I haven't heard anything bad about it now that they're at the end," Williams said. "I think in general you're going to hear positive comments."The widening expanded the strip from two lanes to five lanes two lanes in each direction and a center turn lane in the section north of the Route 302 intersection. Now, motorists can peel off into turn lanes to Settlers' Green Outlet Village and Mountain Valley Mall. Vehicles stop at a new four-way intersection where an Irving gas station has been built.Not everybody is thrilled with the changes.Wally Campbell, owner of Fandangle's Restaurant for 26 years, is suing the state over the widening."The premise for this entire road project is to prove that we don't need it," he said, articulating the basis of the court case now before N.H. Supreme Court.At Fandangle's Restaurant, south of the entrance to Mountain Valley Mall, the widening claimed 9 feet of frontage. "It's about the illegal taking," Campbell said."My thoughts are that the Cairns people did a great job for whatever they were told to do, they gave us all the help they possibly could," he said. "This striping is a problem for me right now because there are no arrows to show any way to get into my place."Ultimately, though, N.H. Department of Transportation didn't need to widen the highway, Campbell said."I just don't think we needed it," he said. "It's not going to help my business. It's not going to help any business on the strip."Turning traffic must cross over three lanes, making turns into businesses more difficult."I believe there's a very good chance that we will have some accidents," Campbell said.JC Penney general manager John Simpson applauded Cairns for the company's good job of communicating about its construction schedules over the summer, but he also had reservations about the widening.The construction zone affected sales in August, at the height of the mall store's back-to-school sales, he said."The unfortunate thing is when most of it was going on in front of the store was during August and back to school, and that made it a bit of a challenge. Other than that, we've weathered it pretty well," Simpson said.The widening project, called Phases 5A, and construction of North-South Road parallel to Route 16 were among the compromise steps to reduce traffic congestion pending a decision on whether a bypass route is needed around Conway.The new North-South Road has improved traffic from the rear of the mall, Simpson said, so he questioned the need for a widened Route 16."I don't understand the necessity for it. When you look at the North-South Road, that's alleviated the traffic on Route 16," he said.The five-lane widening, now that's it's completed, may smooth out traffic patterns, Simpson acknowledged."That will help the traffic moving from the outlet stores to here and back. It probably won't hurt because the out-of-town people now will have a little more freedom of movement up and down Route 16," he said.But Simpson doubted that the widening would lead to increased sales due to a greater volume of traffic.Brooks Brothers manager Shelagh Morton agreed with Simpson that the summer season was a challenge due to construction.Construction took a toll on the store's sales, Morton said."They did their best to leave one entrance open all the time," she said. "There were some days when there was an obvious slowdown of traffic. I think the guys did a good job. They moved as fast as they could. They tried to keep openings open. They were polite.""The end result, I think, is good, and I like having the sidewalk go all the way up," she said.Now, the widening should ease traffic congestion and benefit local business owners, Morton concluded."It definitely had an effect, but I think it was something we had to put up with to get something better," she said.