Repairs and resurfacing of Lake Harbour Drive from Christine Drive to Northpark Drive will continue this spring, carry over into summer and conclude this fall.
Estimated to cost $3.6 million, the project that began March 2 will take about six months to complete.
The contractor will perform base and curb repair and then mill and overlay the entire road. The contractor will also repair and overlay the multi-purpose trail.
The work is needed to provide better road quality, said Ridgeland Mayor Gene McGee.
“Lake Harbour was last paved in 2015, so while the asphalt could probably last a few more years, it will experience a significant amount of deterioration soon,” he said. “It also has significant movement in the base layer, causing a large amount of movement at the surface. The multipurpose trail is also part of the project, and it is in bad shape, with a lot of cracking and base movement.”
Ridgeland takes a comprehensive approach to regular street maintenance and had all the roads in the city profiled in the summer of 2025 to establish priorities, McGee said.
“We have a multi-year plan for paving roads in the order of magnitude of need throughout the city,” he said.
Lake Harbour will never be completely closed in either direction but will have various lanes closed in both directions at some point during the construction, McGee said. “Delays are inevitable, but we are working to make them as low of an impact as possible,” he said.
A.J. Construction received the bid for the project in November after the city received concurrence from the Mississippi Department of Transportation. MDOT’s involvement ensures compliance with federal and state regulations and facilitates funding.
The project is 80 percent funded by a Surface Transportation Block Grant from the Metropolitan Planning Organization and the rest from local funds. That works out to be $2.88 million from federal funding and $721,000 from local funding.
Lake Harbour Drive is a major thoroughfare that moves traffic east and west and has been the focus of improvements in recent years.
In 2025, a $3.3 million project to lengthen the double left turn lanes on Lake Harbour Drive at U.S. Highway 51 in Ridgeland was completed.
To make room at the intersection, the city purchased a small shopping center located on Lake Harbour Drive near U.S. 51 and tore it down. The city bought the Ridgeland Plaza property for about $1 million from Rainbow Development Corp., relocated the tenants and demolished the center to secure the needed right-of-way.
That project included adding an overlay of asphalt and putting down new stripes along the roadway in the project boundaries. A sidewalk was constructed along the south side of Lake Harbour Drive to connect residents of Christine Drive and Ralde Circle to Ridgeland trail network.
In September 2020, Mississippi Transportation Commissioner Wilie Simmons joined McGee and other officials for a ribbon cutting ceremony for the opening of an extension of Lake Harbour Drive.
That project, which cost a total of $28 million, provided for the construction of Lake Harbour Drive Extension from Highland Colony Parkway to U.S. Highway 51. The project included a new bridge over I-55 along with the grade, drain and paving of a new boulevard section of Lake Harbour Drive and provide an at-grade railroad crossing.
Improvements for traffic congestion, emergency services, economic development and commercial activity were made, and a 10-foot-wide multi-use trail was installed.
While the Lake Harbour Drive project is going on, there is also work going on to improve South Wheatley Street from Lake Harbour to Towne Center Boulevard. That project will repair underground drainage and sewer lines, reconstruct the street and add a 6-foot sidewalk on the southbound side of the road.
