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Highway project opens county to development By Seth Ansorge Southwestern Wisconsin is gearing up for some major roadwork. Forty miles of U.S. Highway 151, from Dickeyville to Dodgeville, are expanding from two to four lanes. The estimated $133 million project includes bypasses around four communities, including Platteville, Grant County's seat. With the new road, what was once a long drive between Madison and Dubuque will shorten considerably, Wisconsin Department of Transportation officials said. And beyond that, U.S. 151 will now have four lanes all the way from Fond du Lac to Cedar Rapids in eastern Iowa.
"We expect this is really going to open up southwestern Wisconsin," said Frank Fiorenza, village president of Potosi, located 10 miles from the new road. WisDOT first considered the expansion way back in the 1970s but only got it under way in 2001. By this fall, a multimile stretch from Dodgeville to Belmont will be ready to go. Near Platteville, highway work started this summer. About $15 million of the project's total cost will pay for three bridges and two interchanges needed for the bypass east of the city. Naturally, downtown business owners fear the bypass will turn Platteville's city center — where the existing U.S. 151 runs — into a ghost town. But city planners hope those fears are overblown. Instead, they hope the bypass will spur new construction (and the local economy) for years to come. For months, rumors have been flying about what businesses will locate near the bypass, said Platteville planner Joe Carroll. Besides the usual speculation about hotels, restaurants and fast-food eateries that always crop up around major highway interchanges, word that Wal-Mart wants to build a supercenter near the new road seems to be on everyone's lips. "But we've heard nothing official from Wal-Mart," Carroll said.
Likewise, several car dealers in Platteville have said they'd like to expand near the bypass, but they haven't yet submitted formal plans, Carroll said. In fact, only one business has so far committed to building near the bypass. But it's a big one. Southwest Health Center is constructing a hospital and adjoining medical office building near the juncture of U.S. 151 and state Highway 80. At more than 128,000 square feet, including 35 acute-care beds, the new facilities will cost about $33 million. Besides the bypass itself, the project represents the biggest construction job in the area, Carroll said. Crews with Marshall Erdman & Associates, Madison, broke ground on the site in mid-August and hope to lay foundations by winter. After that, the hospital and offices should open by the summer of 2005, said company CEO Anne Klawiter. Southwest will leave its downtown Platteville facility that Klawiter said was overcrowded and only getting worse. In the last three years, admissions to urgent and emergency care spiked 54 percent, while laboratory and radiology services drew 44 percent and 28 percent more patients, respectively. "We were finding it difficult to handle the increased volume," she said. The new location was picked from nine sites around the city, mainly because the bypass will make the hospital more accessible to the growing number of patients traveling from outside Platteville, Klawiter said. And the 30-acre lot also leaves room to expand. "Every department in the new building was designed for future growth," she said. "We feel ready to meet our future needs." |
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