By: Dean Vaglia | Macomb Chronicle | Published October 8, 2024
MACOMB TOWNSHIP — The final 2-mile stretch of the Garfield Road extension project is complete.
The stretch connects 25 Mile Road to 23 Mile Road within Macomb Township, and it connects the township to the rest of Garfield that runs all the way to the road’s end in Fraser.
“We’re pretty excited about this, to be honest,” Macomb Township Supervisor Frank Viviano said. “I mean, 2 full miles of brand-new north-south road? That’s a big deal in a community that has been fast-growing and is in dire need of traffic congestion relief. It’s important.”
Completed as a joint effort between the township and the Macomb County Department of Roads, the extension of Garfield was first pushed by the township government in 2017.
“The county was receptive to it,” Viviano said. “It was not a high priority for them, but they had made the agreement with my predecessor that if the township took on the lion’s share of the work to get things prepared — which means to acquire all the right-of-way, do some of the legal work and pay 50% of the costs — then they would take on the project and run it through their process.”
James Van Tiflin, the township’s land development director, was the man tasked with making good on the township’s promise to secure the right-of-way.
“We had a number of landowners that generously donated right-of-way for the project,” Van Tiflin said. “We were able to come to agreements with everybody including some property owners who were living on the land; most of it was developer-owned, but we did have a few properties that were not in that situation. It took a while to get through the paperwork that was associated with transferring that land and now, we’re seeing the benefit of all the work that went into it.”
With support from the Macomb County Department of Roads and two different boards of trustees, Van Tiflin was the primary negotiator on the project. While there was some cost involved for damages and losses, owners who donated their right-of-way to the township did so under the belief they would benefit from the land lost.
“They saw the benefit of the road,” Van Tiflin said. “Up until that point, a developer would’ve had to pay for the road, and the way we looked at it and the way the landowners looked at it is that if the township and the county were willing to pay for the road, it was a benefit to the landowner because it opened up their land for potential development.”
The process of acquiring land rights donations affected the development of the project. Garfield Road’s expansion was divided into two phases with the span between 22 Mile and 23 Mile roads being constructed in 2023 while the 23 Mile Road to 25 Mile Road span was built over the course of 2024. The expansions ultimately cost around $12.8 million with the township paying about $7.7 million, and the county, $5.1 million. The county announced the completion of the final span on Sept. 17.
Since it opened, Viviano has heard praise from residents for the new road. One person he spoke with over the phone mentioned going from 25 Mile to 21 Mile in about four minutes. It is a direct north-south route in a part of the township that has not had much in the way of connections, and the residential nature of much of the roadside developments means few access points to impede traffic flow. Viviano sees this as not just a point of convenience for local traffic, but also a safety measure.
“Go back to before Garfield was put in and you kind of have a 2-mile section of the township without a major north-south street,” Viviano said. “If you lived adjacent to future-Garfield, you were traveling like a mile to get out of your subdivision and then you’d have to go all the way over to Romeo Plank or all the way to Hayes. That’s a quicker access for the Fire Department, for police response. It’s a quicker access for people to get to and from work, to get to and from dropping their kids off at school. From those who live right along it there’s been a few concerns about noise from cars — I think that’s understandable — but a lot of people now can drive one block, get on Garfield and head north or head south.”
Completing the Garfield Road project is as much of a celebratory moment for township officials as it is a milestone in the township’s overall road expansion goals. For starters, it allows for the widening of Romeo Plank to take place with another north-south road available to reroute traffic. Broughton Road’s expansion is also in the cards within the decade and while the unique boulevard nature of that expansion poses its own challenges, a key lesson Van Tiflin learned during the Garfield project should help with its completion.
“What I’ve learned is that the board that we have now is a lot more involved in trying to push these projects through than in my experience up to that point,” Van Tiflin said. “These guys understand what it is that needs to be done, and they think creatively. They pester our elected officials at the state level and at the federal level to get more money for these projects. I’m an engineer. I can design anything, but somebody has to come up with the money to make these things actually happen.”