By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – The engineering firm managing a project to widen Alabama 119 south of Alabaster’s Publix shopping center will move on to the public involvement portion of the project in the next few months, engineers told members of the City Council during an Oct. 22 work session.

During the work session, Godowyn, Mills and Cawood representative Keith Strickland said the corridor, topographic survey and route study are finalized, and said the corridor study could be approved by the federal Highway Department in the first quarter of 2016.

Strickland presented the council with a preliminary design for the proposed widening project, which would widen Alabama 119 to five lanes south of its intersection with Fulton Springs Road. Plans call for the widening project to extend slightly south of Veterans Park near the Alabaster-Montevallo line.

The preliminary design places only three houses within the footprint of the widening project, meaning those properties likely would eventually have to be purchased and demolished to make way for the widening.

Strickland said the next major step in the project will come in the form of a public involvement session in the next few months. During the public involvement session, local residents will have a chance to review plans for the project and comment on them.

“Once you get to public involvement, that’s a big deal,” Strickland said. “We are pushing really hard to have that meeting in December. If you get through that meeting with no major negative feedback, you could see the (federal) approval of that corridor study in the first quarter of next year.”

The corridor study must be approved before right-of-way acquisition can begin on the project, said Strickland, who noted the federal Highway Department is also pushing for bike lanes or sidewalks to be included in the project.

“Assuming we can (have the corridor study approved), we should have right-of-way identified late next year,” Strickland said, noting the city could begin purchasing right-of-way in 2017. “Then, the timeline will all depend on right-of-way acquisition.”

In 2012, the state approved about $10 million in federal funding to four-lane the section of Alabama 119 through its Alabama Transportation Rehabilitation and Improvement Program.