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PCMH wants Moye Boulevard relocated to make room for cardiovascular center
By Ginger Livingston The Daily Reflector
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Greenville and Pitt County Memorial Hospital are negotiating to move Moye Boulevard to accommodate construction of the Eastern Carolina Cardiovascular Institute.
Hospital officials are scheduled to present a proposal for rerouting the five-lane road to the Greenville City Council in August. Hospital officials declined to discuss details of the $5 million project because plans have not been formally submitted to the city or Pitt County, hospital spokeswoman Barbara Dunn said.
Rerouting Moye Boulevard has been informally discussed for at least a decade, Tom Tysinger, Greenville's public works director, said. The talks picked up last year when the hospital and East Carolina University received $60 million from the General Assembly to build the cardiovascular institute for the treatment and study of heart disease.
The design plans have the new facility located in front of the existing hospital's east patient tower and family practice center, placing it extremely close to the Moye Boulevard.
Initially, the hospital wanted to close the five-lane highway, but city officials wouldn't allow that, Tysinger said.
"Moye Boulevard has been a minor thorough fare on our (roadway) plan since the mid-80s. It carries about 12,000 vehicles a day," he said."We felt it needed to remain open for general public use."
The hospital conducted its own traffic study and eventually concurred with the city. It then started designing a re-directed highway path,Tysinger said.
A schematic design presented to East Carolina University's Board of Trustees in May shows the proposed route change will start at the existing intersection at Moye Boulevard and Stantonsburg Road. Once traffic crosses Stantonsburg to continue north on Moye, the boulevard will curve to the right.
The new track will take the road through one of the hospital's existing parking lots. It will then curve back to the left through Child's Way Road, then slightly curve north to connect with the existing Moye Boulevard in front of the Brody School of Medicine.
The finance and facilities committee of the East Carolina University Board of Trustees met on May 27 to review the proposal and endorsed the rerouting concept, university spokesman John Durham said.
The hospital plans to submit its proposal to the Metropolitan Planning Organization – a multi-government group that plans the area's transportation growth – in July, and to the Greenville City Council is August.
The hospital has budgeted $3 million to fund the entire project in its upcoming fiscal year.
Hospital officials would not comment on when work on Moye Boulevard will begin. Under a tentative schedule, however, Greenville is expected to close parts of the road when construction starts on thecardiovascular building, Tysinger said.
A groundbreaking for the institute is planned for early 2006. Tysinger said that in late December or January the city will likely reduce Moye's lanes to two, with the possibility of opening a turn lane.
The Moye Boulevard project is one of five scheduled for the medical center district.
Starting next month, construction should begin on an extension that will directly connect Arlington Boulevard to N.C. 43 west. The section of N.C. 43 from Memorial Drive to the Edgecombe County line also is scheduled for widening and repaving, said Marvin Blount III, a local representative on the state Transportation Board. Allen Road also will undergo improvements.
Also, the city and state plan to build a new road that will extend 10th Street to Statonsburg Road. That project will begin in 2009.
Construction on the Arlington expansion and Moye relocation will have some overlap time, Tysinger predicts. The projects should, however, be completed well before the city starts the 10th Street connector.
"Ten years from now, 15 years from now, we are going to need Moye and Arlington to handle the traffic out there," Tysinger said.
"We're trying to provide as much east-west travel through town as we can."
Ginger Livingston can be contacted at glivingston@coxnews.com and 329-9571
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