Despite months of work, the Arizona Department of Transportation announced last week that its extensive $62 million project to widen State Route 260 will not be finished as planned by the end of the month.
Due to wet weather from Hurricane Rosa, the construction wasn’t able to be finished before the weather got cold for the winter.
According to ADOT, the construction will be postponed until the spring, when the air warms up enough for pavement to be set properly. But even with an additional several months of work, local businesses along State Route 260 are optimistic about the project and not particularly worried about the continued construction.
“It hasn’t hurt us at all, that I know of,” said Mark Bentley, a groundskeeper at Sedona View RV Park, on S. Genesis Drive off of State Route 260. “We have a lot of sites up here, and we have a lot of sites available. I go up and down this road every day and it hasn’t slowed me down in the past month. We do pretty good. People can get in here no matter what.”
For Jim Bachelor, owner of Vince’s Auto Body near Camp Verde, the construction has been a boon to business.
“We have a major increase in rock chip damage claims,” Bachelor said. “For the body shop, it’s been awesome since they’ve created road hazards.”
“I’m a big cheerleader; I love it,” Bachelor said jokingly. “If they did more construction I’d make more money. I’m the one guy that’s happy. I hope it takes longer and longer and longer.”
The long construction has been difficult for some though.
“It’s definitely affected business, yeah,” said an employee at Copper Star Shooting Range of the past year of road work. “There’s a lot of stuff we wanted to do that we put on hold.”
Out of Africa Wildlife Park, next to Copper Star, has been holding steady during the construction, but co-owner Bill Jump said the park is looking forward to the construction finally being finished.
“Our attendance has been holding up despite the inconvenience,” Jump wrote in an email. “We do expect an increase in attendance once the road is opened. Our busy season starts in March and I think they will be finished by then.”
“I don’t honestly see it affecting a whole lot,” said Steve Ayers, Camp Verde economic development manager. “It’s probably not going to affect too much as far with the business out there.”
Ayers said that the town hopes that increased traffic to Sedona along State Route 260 will lead to more traffic coming to businesses in Camp Verde, but that the town is not expecting things to shoot up quickly and decisively, and therefore no one is particularly bothered by theconstruction taking some extra time.
He said that the only business he expected might have trouble, the recently started Red Moon RV Park, is not expected to open until June, long after the construction should be finished, even with delays.
“I’m really glad we’re getting to the end of this thing,” Ayers said. “We’ve waited 30 years, we can wait a few more months.”
Jon Hecht can be reached at 634-8551,
or email jhecht@larsonnewspapers.com
