After the near failure of South Airport Road near Logan’s Landing in April, the Grand Traverse County Road Commission (GTCRC) is convening a steering committee of community leaders to determine long-term solutions for the corridor. One option could include raising and widening the crossing’s eastern approach to accommodate a higher Boardman River flow, which could also create a safe crossing underneath South Airport Road for trail users and wildlife.

Road commissioners agreed at a special meeting last week to create a new steering committee with various local stakeholders to evaluate South Airport Road. Garfield Township trustees will discuss the committee at their 6pm meeting tonight (Tuesday). A proposed executive leadership team would include two road commissioners, two township trustees, two Grand Traverse County commissioners, and the county drain commissioner. A community advisory group would also shape the plan, including transportation and safety advocates, recreation and planning officials, property owners, and government partners like the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians.

The committee will “convene and coordinate the advisory group with a goal of developing a design and a funding strategy” for South Airport Road, according to a township memo. The committee will deliver a “final report within one year to be presented to the respective boards for approval and implementation,” the memo states.

GTCRC Chair Alan Leman said a year is “pretty fast by government speed,” but that South Airport Road urgently needs to be addressed. During the April flooding that took out the Beitner Road culverts, South Airport Road’s culverts also came close to collapsing near Logan’s Landing. Local leaders have long-discussed South Airport Road’s location in a floodplain and the need to possibly raise or strengthen the crossing, citing the major stress a prolonged closure could have on the transportation grid.

Leman said the time is right to address South Airport Road’s stability now while it’s still “fresh in everybody’s mind.”

“We’ve known this is a creeping disaster,” he said. “We know we need a fix. We need to engage as many people as we can.” Leman said GTCRC has previously tackled “a lot of big projects by ourselves without any community involvement,” but South Airport Road’s importance to the region – and the need to marshal multiple funding sources to upgrade a major river crossing – requires a collaborative approach. “We need everybody to buy in,” he said.

Road Commissioner Jason Gillman expressed wariness about mission creep for the steering committee, saying he supported its formation if the group stayed strictly focused on repairing or reinforcing South Airport Road. “I don’t want to be the road commission that wants to return the river to its natural state,” he said. “I think we need to make sure that the road that passes through that valley is a good road.”

Gillman estimated that even a no-frills project to replace each culvert set with steel-reinforced box culverts and slightly raise South Airport would cost $6 million, or $3 million per side. “If we start to get on to some path if a steering committee says, ‘Well you know, while we're at it we could do this’ – all the sudden those costs can start to escalate,” Gillman said. “And any advantage we get from working with our partners at the county or the township are going to be lost, because we're going to have engineering complexity, we're going to have time complexity.”

Leman said the goal is not to set up a “permanent bureaucracy that's going to add to this confusion. We have a particular problem to solve. This group will focus on South Airport Road. The charge is to find a solution that works.” But GTCRC does have to work with partners to get it done, he said, which Road Commissioner Joe Underwood echoed. “We're going to have to go to the county board and ask them to bond it if we're going to pay for it...so they have to be a partner, just pure and simple,” he said.

Some road commissioners also noted that design options have been considered over South Airport’s history that could improve the road’s longevity and still offer additional community benefits. In 2010, a GTCRC steering committee evaluated an option called the Okerstrom Overpass, said Road Commissioner Alisa Korn. The name came from Vasa co-founder Ted Okerstrom and contemplated a way to get Vasa racers safely across South Airport Road and into downtown Traverse City.  Korn, who dug the concept back up to present to road commissioners last week, said it could be the “fastest and easiest fix” for South Airport Road.

Plans would include raising and widening the east side of the bridge (near the former Art Van and Value City furniture stores, now Gardner White). That elevated crossing could handle the “full flow of the river” with increased capacity during surge events on the Boardman, Korn said. It could also allow wildlife, skiers, hikers, and other trail users to transit underneath. The crossing would taper down near Logan’s Landing to only be 4-5 feet high, which would maintain effective egress for businesses in the valley so they don’t have “significant issues with the road and the grading,” Korn said.

“The way that we had viewed it back (in 2010) is we have two high sides of a ridge,” she explained. “One is at Goodwill and one is at Art Van, and we would slowly go down…over Logan’s Landing.” Korn said the project would allow the entire Natural Education Reserve trail system to tie into the Boardman Lake Loop Trail – “which was the goal to begin with” – while simultaneously raising South Airport and creating a safe road crossing. “A lot of the work has already been done,” Korn said. “We have an opportunity to create a transit system that’s good for everything…I think it’s doable, I think it’s financially feasible, I think it’s environmentally safe. I think it has all of the features that we need.”

Korn also said there are more potential partners at the table than there were in 2010. For example, the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians now has a significant stake in the Boardman Lake area after recently purchasing NMC’s Cass Road campus for $27 million to be its new tribal governmental center. Korn said the steering committee could work with the Tribe and a wide range of other partners – from TART Trails to the Conservation Resource Alliance to the Coastal Zone Management Program – on funding a South Road solution that benefits everyone.

Road Commissioner Haider Kazim said he was supportive of an approach geared toward “getting community buy-in at all levels.” He added: “Let’s get this solved. Because it has been something that has been talked about for years with no action. Now there's an opportunity to take action and to do something about it, so that we can secure this corridor for the future.”