Silica Road Northwest, West Baseline Road work to start in March

QUINCY — Drivers in the area of Silica Road Northwest, West Baseline Road and Sunland Estates will experience traffic delays beginning in mid-March. Construction crews will widen a section of Baseline Road and a section of Silica Road, along with resurfacing another section of Silica Road, all around the Gorge Amphitheater.

“So come mid-March, you’ll see that we’re already doing prep work on (West) Baseline, east of Silica (Road), about a mile,” said David Bren, Grant County engineer. “Because we’re going to widen Baseline and add a center lane — a queuing lane, a turning lane — too. So Baseline is going to be redone and widened, and it’s going to be restriped so it has a center turning lane.”

Silica Road north and south of the entrance to the amphitheater also will get some work. 

“Silica (Road) south of (Sunland Road), about a mile as well, will be widened into three lanes,” Bren said. 

Silica Road between Sunland Road and Road 1 Northwest, which is already three lanes, will be resurfaced. 

“The two miles that are directly in front of the amphitheater, those will be overlaid,” he said. “So what you’re going to see is about four miles of new asphalt work. So this is overlay and widening with asphalt, not chip seal.”

Traffic congestion on concert weekends has been a challenge, he said, and 2023 brought some new problems. 

“What happened this last season is that even though we had two lanes going into the event, some people would take the opposing lane, the third lane coming out, like, headed straight at cars,” Bren said. “That tells you the level of frustration that was occurring this last year. Apparently, that happened a few times in the season. It was kind of a new thing.”

The roads in the vicinity of the amphitheater were built long before it was, and were not designed for the kind of traffic the area is getting on concert weekends, he said. The sections of Silica Road and Baseline Road are surfaced with chip seal, which is a mix of rock and a binding material. 

“Those cars are really hot, and on a hot day, you have all the heat of the cars and the heat of the day. So that (binding material) would come up, and it would be this sticky mess that they’re driving in. It’s called bleeding, where it basically bleeds out, and everyone is driving in it,” Bren said.

In addition, more concertgoers are bringing recreational vehicles to the venue, more weight than the roads were designed to handle. That caused extra damage. 

“All that’s going to be gone, because you’re going to have three inches of asphalt, just like you would have on an interstate highway,” Bren said. 

Different funding sources are paying for different parts of the project. Widening and resurfacing West Baseline is being paid for by a $600,000 grant from the county’s Lodging Tax Advisory Committee. 

“The biggest contributor to the LTAC is the amphitheater,” Bren said. “It’s been a long time since they’ve seen anything coming from that contribution. It’s a good way for us to show that their LTAC monies are supporting what they do.”

The section of Silica Road that’s getting a third lane is being funded through the county’s real estate excise tax at a cost of about $1 million, according to the county’s six-year road plan. Bren said it’s difficult to get state or federal funding to widen existing roads or build new ones. 

Because resurfacing the three-lane section of Silica Road is an improvement to an existing road, county officials received a federal grant, about $1.1 million.

“We’re going to get it done before the amphitheater season, which is nice,” Bren said.

Cheryl Schweizer may be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.