With a new shopping center in Madison under way, the city will rename a couple of streets.
In order to unify the roads with the up-and-coming Crawford Farms retail center, the south portion of Welch Farms Road will be changed to Crawford Farms Boulevard.
The road intersects Mississippi Highway 463 west of Rosa Scott High School and the Madison Police Department, both located off Crawford Street, which will retain its name.
“The extension on the north side of it is going to remain Welch Farms Road,” Joe Welch, Madison public works director, said. “When they came up with that development, (officials and developers) thought it’d be nice to have the same name (as the retail center) on the south side of the street.”
Once construction crews have completed the Welch Farms Road/Crawford Farms Boulevard extension, the road will connect Highway 463 with Madison Avenue and connect to the shopping center.
There will also be an east-west road called Crawford Farms Court that will eventually connect Crawford Street and Crawford Farms Boulevard.
Once completed, the retail center will be home to an Academy Sports and Hobby Lobby, among other stores.
City officials approved the first phase’s site plan and preliminary plat for the shopping center in February. The first phase will consist of two retailers in a 119,000-square-foot space.
The first phase of the development will open in the first quarter of 2018. The retail component of the development could accommodate plus or minus 250,000 square feet.
“The design and architecture will be in keeping with other similar projects in Madison,” John Michael Holtmann, principal of Duckworth Realty Inc., said. “Our experience with the city has been great.”
The development will be located on 38 acres near Madison Avenue.
IN DECEMBER, city officials approved the extension of Crawford Farms Boulevard/Welch Farms Road, along which the new retail center will be located.
“There’s vacant property on the south end (of Welch Farms Road)… This is just east of Lowe’s, in the tree area,” Chad Wages, former Madison public works director, said in a previous Sun article. “The developer is paying for road access to the development that parallels Grandview Boulevard from 463 to Madison Avenue.”
The city will pay for the portion of the road located on city property, but will need to acquire rights of way adjacent to Liberty Park.
“The city is paying for the south portion of the road, and the developer is paying for the north portion,” said Wages. “The new north-south corridor should help traffic.”
Pickering Engineering is designing the city’s side of the road.
The entire road should stretch about a mile and will start at four lanes before transitioning to three lanes on the south (city’s) half of the road.
The city’s budget for roadway construction should be between $1.8 million and $2.5 million, according to Wages.
“We’re estimating plus or minus $2.1 million.”
