An additional $1 million in federal funding will help Peoria County pay for preliminary design engineering on a project to revitalize Radnor Road, although construction may still be years away.
While the stretch of county highway between Willow Knolls Road and the roundabout at Alta Lane on Peoria’s north side is already heavily used, county engineer Amy McLaren said the upgrades are needed to handle an expected higher traffic volume over the next decade.
“There is a lot of businesses on the southern end, and on the northern end there’s a lot of subdivisions and housing,” said McLaren. “And there’s additional housing planned on the far north end of the project, northeast of the roundabout. So there is going to be additional traffic.”
U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood joined county officials this week at Ridgeview Elementary School as he presented a ceremonial check representing the latest funding allocation. It comes on top of $500,000 allocated two years ago.
“Each year, every member of Congress has a process to make [funding] requests. We look at what our priorities are, and then make a recommendation to the county board about what those priorities are,” said County Administrator Scott Sorrel.
“This project is in Congressman LaHood’s district, so that’s why he was the member of Congress that we requested the funding from. Just about every year, we request funding in some fashion or form from both senators and Congressman LaHood and Congressman [Eric] Sorensen.”
Sorrel said part of the reasoning for improving Radnor Road stems from the City of Peoria’s anticipated future plans to extend Pioneer Parkway westward from its current terminus at Allen Road to Illinois 91.
“The first phase of that project is likely to be from Allen Road to Radnor Road,” said Sorrel. “Radnor Road is a rural county highway, and it is not designed to accommodate the increased traffic that we would see when the city builds that stretch of Pioneer Parkway extended.”
The current two-lane road also runs between the Peoria Park District’s Kellogg Golf Course and the newly enhanced Golf Learning Center, and Ridgeview Elementary School is in the vicinity.
McLaren said the improvements are likely to include new pavement, replacing existing ditches with storm sewers, curbs and gutters, added sidewalks, and elements to control speed.
“We’re going to look at possibly slowing folks down for pedestrian crossings between the park district facilities, and there’s also a school in the area, so we want to be mindful of that as far as safety,” she said.
McLaren said they may consider widening lanes and possibly adding a bidirectional center turn lane, but adds that the underpass beneath Illinois 6 is controlled by the Illinois Department of Transportation and there are currently no plans to widen it.
“As we get more into the preliminary engineering, we’ll have some better idea of what kind of traffic we can anticipate, and that information will be presented to the public when we have our public meeting, which we anticipate to be sometime later next year,” she said.
Estimates put the full cost for the project at around $21 million. McLaren said with the preliminary engineering just getting underway now, it could be around three years before any construction begins.
“We currently do not have any construction dollars yet that are in hand. What we’re looking at is finishing the design and the engineering, probably around 2029,” she said. “We do have some money tentatively in our future budgeting for 2030 to do a little bit of construction, a couple million dollars. But that is a couple years out, and that only takes us a portion of the way.
“Hopefully once we get going on it, we’ll be able to possibly tap some of these other congressional opportunities. There might be some grants available, and we’ll be well positioned because we’ll have our preliminary and design engineering done.”
Sorrel said the most probable scenario would have the project constructed in phases, with the southern portion of Radnor Road likely to be the first phase.
“We’ll be working with the City of Peoria, because portions of the of the property on either side of the road are inside the city of Peoria,” said Sorrel. “We have an intergovernmental agreement with the city that dates back to the 1960s that tells us what that design should be, in terms of curb and gutter, storm water, pedestrian access.
“There’s also a mechanism in that intergovernmental agreement for how we would cost-share the project. We try and get state and federal funds first, and then what’s left over we typically cost-share that with the city.”
He says once the project is complete, it’s likely that a jurisdictional transfer will convert the county highway into a Peoria city street.
