KINGWOOD — After more than a year of closure, if all goes as planned, Hospital Hill will reopen next week to traffic.
That’s according to the State Division of Highways’ (DOH) Mike Cronin, acting District 4 engineer.
The road, which is the end of South Price Street in Kingwood, was closed Feb. 1, 2019, by the Kingwood Volunteer Fire Department (KVFD) because of safety concerns.
That’s after KVFD was notified by the DOH in August 2018 that the fire department owned the road.
For 40-plus years the DOH maintained the lower end of South Price Street from where it intersects Brown Avenue to Showerbath Road. The 0.237-mile section from the intersection with the former Preston Memorial driveway to Showerbath is known locally as Hospital Hill.
The city, KVFD and school system all wrote the state in support of keeping the road open. In August, the DOH agreed to add the road to the state local service system.
“We have performed major pothole patching, re-ditched the road and we are now paving it using our WVDOH paver,” the agency said in an email. “The road will need to be striped, which is something we have a contractor do, but will have temporary ‘dots’ placed at the center line to expedite being able to open the road.”
TWEET@DominionPostWV
