By permission of UDOT
If you’re planning a vacation to Zion National Park next year, you should be aware that the only route through the park will be more difficult. The gateway communities of Springdale and Rockville will become construction zones in 2016. The project will start at the entrance to Rockville and go all the way through Springdale to the entrance of Zion National Park. The roadway will be reconstructed at a current estimate of $10 million — all federal money. However, this figure is subject to change, as a design consultant hasn’t been selected yet, and the work to be done is still in the planning stage. UDOT’s current schedule calls for a consultant to be selected during the first week of January.
In a recent Springdale community meeting, Mayor Stan Smith called the project “a huge nightmare.”
“This is frank and honest,” Smith said. “It’s not going to be pretty. … Traffic is going to be horrible. But we all have to look at it and say, ‘We deal with it during those four months because afterwards, we’ll have something that will last fifty years.’”
Smith said that the current estimate for a start date is sometime in September. The project is planned to be finished by Easter of 2017.
By permission of UDOT
Many residents of Springdale and Rockville have been concerned about protecting the historic irrigation ditches in both towns. Lined with sandstone slabs, these ditches are some of the few reminders in modern-day Springdale and Rockville of the agricultural past of the towns. Both have gone to great lengths to preserve what they still have. Rockville just completed a $110,000 project to rehabilitate their ditches last year that was funded by UDOT. Smith said that Springdale plans on saving what they can but that not all of the ditches will be preserved.
Springdale’s official Historic Preservation Commission discussed what to do with the ditches in two successive meetings in July and August. UDOT Program Manager Dana Meier told the Commission that from a transportation perspective, the best outcome would be to eliminate the ditches, but Commissioner Jack Burns said that would be a “tough sell.”
“They are character-defining,” Burns said, “and currently the town is struggling to maintain what character remains.”
Eric Hansen from UDOT said the ditches have already been determined eligible for the National Historic Registry. Some Springdale residents want SR9 to stay a two-lane road and like the fact that the historic ditches will make it impossible for UDOT to turn SR9 into a four-lane highway which they feel would destroy any “village atmosphere” left.
Public Domain from Springdale Town Council Documents
While UDOT is tearing up Springdale’s main street, the Town will use the opportunity to replace 35 “cobra head” street lights to come into compliance with a “dark sky” ordinance that was passed in 2009. A six-year transition period was part of the ordinance, and everyone in Springdale will be required to have outdoor lights that satisfy the ordinance. Smith said that combining the two construction projects would save the town a lot of money.
Additionally, Smith said they might be able to improve a problematic intersection at Paradise Road, but he couldn’t promise anything yet. He said that Springdale was still planning on remaining a community with no stop lights.
The road through Rockville will not be completely torn up and replaced since UDOT has concluded that it’s in better shape. In Springdale, however, a “full depth reconstruction” will be done starting approximately at the location of the Majestic Hotel. For more information on the project, visit the UPlan system on the UDOT website.
