thedailytimes.com : Your 24/7 news source

The first contracts for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act-funded projects at Great Smoky Mountains National Park will be awarded by late August.

The Park is receiving $64 million to improve facilities. Officials said they are hoping to minimize the disruption that the work will have on visitor use.

"The projects that can be accomplished using day-labor workers are funded at $1.2 million and are already underway," said Park Deputy Superintendent Kevin FitzGerald. "Work is ongoing to make improvements to ten different trails and over 60 historic cemeteries. All the rest of the projects will be completed by private contractors. We expect to begin awarding an estimated $7.5 million worth of contracts by late August so that work can begin right after Labor Day."

The park plans to contract for four projects in this next phase:

Repaving the Cosby Campground,

Reconfiguring and repaving the Sinks parking area along Little River Road,

Painting and/or re-roofing 34 buildings throughout the Park,

Remodeling comfort stations at five locations to make them accessible to the handicapped.

Cosby Campground, which normally operates through October, will be closed for the season the day after Labor Day so that the paving work can be completed in the fall, before the weather turns cold enough to shut down paving operations. It is expected to re-open on schedule in March 2010.

The Sinks parking area will also be closed after Labor Day. For safety reasons no visitor access will be allowed into the parking area, overlook or river in the immediate vicinity of the Sinks during construction.

The Meigs Creek trailhead will also be inaccessible during the construction period. That work is expected to be completed in May 2010.

"The work at the Sinks will be a huge improvement over the current situation," FitzGerald said, "In addition to expanding and reconfiguring the parking area to improve both the capacity and motorist safety, we will be constructing a formalized masonry overlook platform that will provide an optimal view of the falls and be fully accessible to the disabled."

Park officials expect that visitor impact from the comfort station remodeling to be minimal. Two restrooms, one at the Deep Creek Picnic Area, and one at the Twin Creeks Picnic Pavilion will be torn down and replaced with new structures. That work will be done during the fall/winter months when those facilities are closed for the season.

Multiple restrooms will also be improved at the Smokemont, Elkmont and Cades Cove Campgrounds, some of which are open throughout the year. Park managers say they can work around the visitor use at those locations by either closing the campground loop that a restroom serves or by providing temporary portable toilets.

Paving projects

Contracts for a second phase of ARRA projects are slated to be awarded this fall for projects that will be undertaken next spring. These projects include re-paving Clingmans Dome Road and the Cherokee Orchard/Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. Cades Cove Loop Road will be repaved as well.

The Park is also working with the Federal Highway Administration to develop a Request for Qualifications from eligible contractors to design and construct the 800- foot-long Bridge No. 2 on the Foothills Parkway "Missing Link." They anticipate the award of a contract estimated to be in the $30 million range by December 2009.

"We are extremely excited about being able to get so much needed work done at one time." FitzGerald said.

The largest single project in the Park to be funded with the ARRA money will be the design and construction of a 1,200-foot section of the Foothills Parkway extending westward from its intersection with U.S. 321 in Wears Valley.

Construction of the 16.1-mile section of the Parkway that will eventually run from Wears Valley to Walland began in the 1970s when seven miles were partly completed before funding ran out. Work resumed in the mid-80s with one project extending east from the Walland end and another project building westward from Wears Valley. Those two jobs were halted in the early 1990s after encountering numerous slides and erosion problems, leaving a 1.6-mile segment unfinished.

Between 1998 and 2008 a series of three bridges which span a total of 1,675 feet were completed on the Walland end of the unfinished segment.

The parkway was conceived in the 1920s, authorized by Congress in 1944 and finally begun in 1960. The parkway is the oldest unfinished public works project in Tennessee -- a 72-mile, two-lane route that is still not half done.