Anticipating a city's growth often boils down to officials' watching trends and making a best guess. Harder still is predicting the additional demands on an area's roads that development brings.
With the recent announcement of a new 76-bed hospital by Jefferson Regional Medical Center and Kindred Rehabilitation Services, city officials and regional planners are looking to other areas of White Hall to help predict and minimize traffic concerns.
The White Hall hospital is to be a 40-bed inpatient rehabilitation facility, along with a 36-bed behavioral unit. The 87,000-square-foot medical facility will be on the 80-acre site purchased in 2005 by JRMC at 1600 West Holland Ave. near Interstate 530.
"No problems, then you're not growing," White Hall Mayor Noel Foster said after the groundbreaking of the White Hall Plaza.
The plaza is being built on Sheridan Road near I-530, Exit 34, and south of the planned hospital.
Sheridan Road will be widened to five lanes to help ease traffic congestion, with construction to begin this fall. On the southern end of the town, Holland Road, where the hospital will be built within the next two years, already experiences heavy traffic at certain times of the day.
With the new hospital, the mayor said, traffic congestion could become a bigger problem in this area.
This is especially true early in the morning and afternoon, when the two-lane, narrow-shouldered Holland Road is usually congested or backed up. In addition to several homes and the proposed hospital, two schools and Pine Bluff Arsenal personnel and students use this road daily.
It's usually busy just before the start and end of the day at White Hall High School and Moody Elementary School, both of which are between I-530 and Dollarway Road.
In addition to school personnel, high school students are allowed to drive to school and park on campus during the day. Moody Elementary parents drop students off.
Lisa Rhodes, JRMC spokeswoman, said it's too early in the process to know how many staffers will be employed at the White Hall facility.
Once Holland Road crosses Dollarway, it becomes Hoadley Road and is still Highway 256. It basically dead-ends into the Arsenal's Plainview Gate area.
The Arsenal and the city are currently looking for resources to widen and make improvements to about a two-mile stretch from the Plainview Gate area to where it intersects with Dollarway Road.
With the award of a $500,000 Compatible Use Implementation contract to the Matrix Design Group in July, White Hall is one step closer to improvements on Hoadley Road, according to an October article.
Larry Wright, consulting engineer for White Hall, was instrumental in obtaining funding for this project. He said the ultimate goal of this project is to turn the Pine Bluff Arsenal's Plainview Gate into a commercial and employee vehicle entrance and exit.
Currently, there are approximately 740 civil and military employees working there, and about 11,000 tons of shipments pass through the gates annually, said Cheryl Avery, arsenal spokeswoman.
If development continues in these areas, it could further impact the traffic usage near the Holland Road and I-530 intersection, Foster said.
A solution would be to widen Holland Road. But there are no such plans for the road improvements or widening at this time, said Drew Hoggard, Arkansas Department of Transportation (ARDOT) District 2 Engineer. This highway -- both Hoadley and Holland roads -- falls inside the boundaries of his district area.
Foster said he plans to request an ARDOT traffic study concerning daily vehicle volume, and bring the road widening needs to the attention of the Southeast Arkansas Regional Planning Commission (SARPC).
The SARPC's goal is to look at the area as a whole and consider long-term outcomes, and they are aware of the need for good, functional roads, said Ken Smith, who is White Hall City Council chair, heads the local Planning Commission and is chair of the Southeast Arkansas Regional Planning Commission.
In addition to possibly widening Holland Road to four lanes, the mayor said he would like to see a dedicated turning lane.
INSIDE THE NEW HOSPITAL
According to the hospital's news release, the rehabilitation services will be dedicated to adult patients who experienced a loss of function or disability due to stroke, brain injury, spinal cord injury, neurological disorders, orthopaedic surgery and other conditions.
The behavioral unit will offer "inpatient and outpatient behavioral health services for adults and seniors, including crisis stabilization for acute mental health and substance use disorders; detoxification from alcohol and drugs; and treatment for anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and many other behavioral health illnesses," the press release stated.