Widening on Tap for Pleasant Valley Road: Planned Developments Spur Change

By Keith Lawrence, Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.

Jul. 13–The stretch of Pleasant Valley Road from U.S. 60 East to Hayden Road isn’t quite two miles long.

It’s a narrow country road with no shoulders and not much traffic.

But if all goes according to plan, that’s all going to be changing within the next four years.

Owensboro Medical Health System plans to build a $500 million hospital on 145 acres just south of the CSX Railroad tracks on the east side of Pleasant Valley.

They’re shooting for a Nov. 11, 2011, grand opening.

The new facility will employ more than 3,200 people and expects to admit more than 25,000 patients a year.

Most patients will have visitors.

And that means a lot of traffic.

But the hospital is just the start of the changes that may be coming.

Gulfstream Enterprises is planning a 200-acre development called Gateway Commons southwest of the big curve where Pleasant Valley Road goes into Hayden Road.

That development is expected to employ more than 4,000 people and feature 630,000 square feet of retail space, 240,000 square feet of restaurants and offices, a 25-room hotel, a 130,000-square-foot convention center, a 6,000-seat arena, 150 condos and 116 apartments.

Traffic is expected to be heavy there too.

Most people heading toward both the hospital and Gateway Commons are expected to use the new 3.4-mile section of the U.S. 60/U.S. 231 bypass that is scheduled to be built over the next four years.

That section of highway will run from U.S. 60 East near Hawesway Truck Plaza to the current bypass near the Kentucky 54 interchange.

But motorists will have to drive a short-distance on Pleasant Valley Road to get to either of the planned developments.

Don’t worry, though.

Keith Harpole, transportation planner for the Green River Area Development District, said plans are in the works to widen Pleasant Valley Road to four lanes.

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet will widen the section south of the railroad tracks when it builds the off ramps and on ramps for the new section of the bypass, he said.

“They’ll go north almost to the railroad tracks,” he said. “And they’ll go south to Hayden Road.”

But Harpole is hoping that money will be available to widen Pleasant Valley all the way back to U.S. 60 East.

“It would be better to widen it all as one project rather than coming back later to take it from the hospital to U.S. 60 East,” he said.

Widening Pleasant Valley Road “is our No. 3 long-term priority behind widening U.S. 231 from Masonville to Owensboro Community & Technical College and widening U.S. 431 from Panther Creek to Martin Luther King Jr. Loop,” Harpole said.

“None of them are in the state’s six-year road plan yet,” he said. “But they have to start out on our long-range plan.”

Work on Pleasant Valley Road is still a few years away, Harpole said.

“Construction (of the bypass extension) will start out by Hawesway and move west,” he said. “So that section (Pleasant Valley to Kentucky 54) will be the last built.”

Harpole said community leaders are also hoping to widen Daniels Lane — which parallels Pleasant Valley Road on the east — from the railroad to Hayden Road.

If the hospital and Gateway Commons are built, Harpole said, widening Pleasant Valley won’t be an option.

“It will have to be widened to support the traffic out there,” he said.

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Copyright (c) 2007, Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.

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