MORGANTOWN — “It’s been a long road,” Glenn Adrian told members of the Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization Policy Board.
“But we’re seeing a small light at the end of the tunnel.”
Adrian, co-owner of the Morgantown Industrial Park as part of Enrout Properties, appeared during the board’s most recent meeting to provide a status update on a new Harmony Grove interchange that will provide a direct connection between I-79 and the industrial park.
He said the goal is to have the exhaustive Interstate Justification Report process wrapping up with the Federal Highways Administration in the next 60 days or so.
That, he continued, should conclude with a determination about the final interchange design, which would start the clock on the public portion of the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, review process.
“From there, it’s up to the DOH to basically take it and determine whether we have a viable project or not,” he said.
While Adrian stopped short of providing the board with a timeline, he told The Dominion Post in May that he’s hopeful the interchange will be under construction in 2024 and open in 2025.
And time is of the essence.
About one-third of the new 330,000-square-foot Mountaintop Beverage bottling facility came online last month.
Between raw products coming in and finished product leaving, Adrian said about 22 trucks are traveling through Westover and down DuPont Road on Mountaintop business each day.
That number, which is in addition to the trucks accessing the other industrial park facilities, is going to climb significantly.
Mountaintop Beverage CEO Jeffrey Sokal anticipates the entire facility will be operational by year’s end. Further, the company could begin construction on a 170,000-square-foot Phase II as early as this summer.
“This interchange will become more and more crucial,” Adrian said. “Of course, I don’t have to tell [Westover] Mayor Lucci that. Those trucks go by that office on DuPont Road every day.”
According to Adrian, the DOH should have new signage at the intersection of River, DuPont and Industrial Park roads in the coming weeks in an effort to prevent trucks from accessing Mountaintop Beverage via Master Graphics Road.
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