City to close Park Drive for speedy construction on HWY 30

Published 2:00 pm Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Park Drive, just west of Highway 30, will close on Monday, Apr. 4 in order to revise an intersection and speed up construction on the Highway 30 roundabout as part of the Colonnade Crossing development.

The Oxford Board of Aldermen has approved the closing during a special board meeting at City Hall on Tuesday morning.

“We are building roundabouts up there at that interchange and those intersections,” said Assistant City Engineer John Crawley. “The time has come for us to make the connection to what is going to be a revised intersection there at Park Drive. We need to close the existing intersection of Park Drive and Highway 30 because of grade changes, so we’re going to facilitate that.”

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Though the project will inconvenience the public, the closure will benefit the progress of the construction.

“It will speed the project up significantly and it will get traffic out of that construction area,” said Crawley.

“We know that the residents of Park Drive will certainly be affected as far as what their normal ingress and egress is going to be,” said Mayor Robyn Tannehill. “I know a lot of people take that way to go to school.”

Crawley notified the Mayor and Aldermen that the crew will work with Park Drive residents and allow them to access the street, park and go South.

Officials estimate the closure to last at least three weeks with the understanding that construction needs to be finished as quickly as possible in anticipation of events like the 25th Annual Double Decker Festival.

A map of the closure and construction will be placed on the city of Oxford’s website at www.oxfordms.net later today, according to Crawley.