CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The long-awaited Capitol Connector project is ready to move forward in downtown Charleston, with construction bids expected in the coming weeks.
After six years of planning, the project’s construction contract is nearly ready to go out for bid.
“Probably going to see an announcement here in the next week or two about putting the project out to bid. We’ve already put out to bid our project manager and our material sample testers. We wanted to go ahead and get that out of the way, but we’re working very closely with the state and the feds so we’re ready to cross the finish line,” Matt Sutton, chief of staff for Charleston Mayor Amy Shuler Goodwin, said on 580 Live with Dave Allen.
The Capitol Connector is one of Goodwin’s longstanding priorities that actually predates her administration. The project will expand the Kanawha Boulevard Walk and Bikeway as it runs along the river from Magic Island on the West Side to the 35th Street Bridge.
That extends the work done under former Mayor Danny Jones that created a wider path running alongside Kanawha Boulevard through the West Side to Magic Island.
“We looked at it when Mayor Goodwin got here and said we need to finish this project. We need to come all the way down from Magic Island to the 35th Street Bridge on the Boulevard and really take advantage of it, so in 2020 we started to plan. We had some time on our hands when COVID was going on, so we really put pen to paper and started to plan,” Sutton said.
The city received a Federal RAISE Grant to start planning the Capitol Connector, and additional funding came in 2023 for the construction phase. Under current plans, four- and five-lane sections of Kanawha Boulevard will be reduced to two- and three-lanes, respectively, to allow for expansion of the walk and bikeway.
The existing path between Magic Island and the 35th Street Bridge is only 4-6 feet wide, and Sutton believes widening it will create a more cohesive and safer space.
“Everybody runs and jogs up and down the boulevard. We need to create more space. We need to create a safer space so we’re lowering the speed limit, shrinking down the lanes, and making sure we have enough place for people to run, walk, bike, and have a good time,” he said.
In addition to the work along Kanawha Boulevard, a quarter-mile stretch of Greenbrier Street will receive security upgrades to allow for better connectivity with the State Capitol Complex on the city’s East End.
Sutton expects work to start quickly after the construction bid goes out.
“We’ve been working to get that project ready to go, and we’re ready to go, so it’s going to be, I would imagine, that if we looked at it sometime in late October, early November is when we’d start construction,” he said.
A full breakdown of the Capitol Connector project is available on the West Virginia Department of Transportation website.