By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – Local residents will have a chance to review plans to widen Alabama 119 south of Alabaster’s Publix shopping center and offer feedback on the project during an early December meeting at Alabaster City Hall.

The Alabama Department of Transportation announced the public involvement meeting on Oct. 29, and has scheduled it from 4-7 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 3, at Alabaster City Hall at 1953 Municipal Way.

During the public meeting, ALDOT will provide details and maps of the proposed project, and Alabaster officials and ALDOT staff members will be on-hand to discuss the project with local residents.

During an Oct. 22 City Council 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.

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.

ALDOT also is currently accepting written public comments on the project, and will accept them during the Dec. 3 meeting or by mail at: Mr. DeJarvis Leonard, P.E. Region Engineer, Alabama Department of Transportation – East Central Region, P.O. Box 2745, Birmingham, Ala., 35202-2745, Attn: Mrs. Sandra F.P. Bonner.

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.