Interstate 69’s construction in West Tennessee is still a few years away, but its promise already is impacting the economies of some small towns in its path.
In Dyersburg, I-69 was important enough that major employer Caterpillar decided to stay and expand operations despite company-wide layoffs.
In Union City, officials say the promise of the interstate has contributed to a positive business climate, including the opening of several chain restaurants and a Lowe’s in the last year. Also, the city and Obion County are developing an industrial park near where the thoroughfare will run.
In Millington, Mayor Terry Jones says the coming of I-69 has spurred development of another key local road, Veterans Parkway, that will soon connect an industrial park with U.S. 51, a main thoroughfare. Later, it also will connect the park to I-69.
“The thought that I-69 is going to be here has changed everybody’s thinking,” says Union City businessman Jim Rippy, the chairman of the Obion County Joint Economic Development Council. “It has changed the whole spirit of the county and community.”
And that’s just what Congress was hoping would happen all along the 1,600 miles of the project. Dubbed the “NAFTA Highway,” I-69 was already in place from the Canadian border to Indianapolis when the full Canada-to-Mexico corridor was planned in 1990. The remainder of the project will extend through nine states, providing a key trade route between all three NAFTA countries.
The price tag for the remaining portion, while a moving target, stands now at $17 billion, with states kicking in $3 billion of the total. A massive $300 billion transportation bill in Congress could provide the next large influx of cash for the project. If the bill passes, much of the road in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana could be built by 2009, says Dyersburg Mayor Bill Revell, who chairs the Tennessee I-69 coordinating committee.
“It will have to be built in sections,” Revell says. “And we may have to come up with more and more creative financing options.”
From its inception, the project has met opposition from landowners and environmental activists all along the proposed route. In Tennessee, the only vocal opponents appear to be the Memphis chapter of the Sierra Club and a handful of landowners who stand to be displaced once construction begins.
The environmental group complained in a letter to the Tennessee Department of Transportation in November that the project was not needed, was too costly and would increase pollution in Memphis.
State and federal officials, however, say the project is a go and are encouraging communities in the area to explore opportunities presented by the road.
“The I-69 project will provide the region of West Tennessee an opportunity to come together to market all it has to offer more effectively,” says Matt Kisber, the state’s commissioner of economic and community development. “The distance to the interstate will be shortened, specifically for those rural areas that have not had the road access needed to attract specific industries.”
In Tennessee, I-69 will generally follow U.S. 51 from South Fulton down to Memphis and on to Tunica in Mississippi. The first Tennessee section likely to start construction will begin in early 2006 and will complete the road from Dyersburg to Union City and on to Fulton, Ky. Twenty miles of this road already has been built and marked with “Future I-69” signage.
For Dyersburg’s Revell, 75, the road has been a consuming activity. Revell was involved from I-69’s creation and has traveled to Mexico and Michigan as part of his work on
the road. He says the importance of the interstate for rural northwest Tennessee is hard to overestimate.
“Nine million people live in poverty along this whole corridor,” Revell says. “It goes right through the heart of the Mississippi Delta. It will definitely benefit those below the poverty level.”
Interstates are a magnet for economic activity, just as railroads were in the 1800s, Union City’s Rippy says. When Interstate 55 was developed, it crossed over the Mississippi River at Memphis and shut out northwest Tennessee.
“We were cut off from growth caused by the interstate,” Rippy says. “About 40 years later, I-69 puts us back in the game.”
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