MONROE — A council committee last week directed city administration to restart the pursuit on a new connection road from the Eaglemont housing developments to the Chain Lake Road roundabout.
This new road, 191st Street SE, would give a straight shot from Rainier View Road to connect to either Galaxy Way behind Walmart or tp the Chain Lake Road roundabout. Going north on Chain Lake Road to turn onto Rainier View Road is how most residents get to their neighborhoods today.
At the tail end of the 2010s, the city commissioned design work for 191st Street SE, but the City Council stopped everything when the price came in way above expectations. The cheapest option was $5.6 million; the fanciest — a roundabout connecting to the road next to the Walmart — was $10.6 million.
If the city wants to build the road, the project would compete against other capital projects, including parks, finance director Becky Hasart noted at last week’s Transportation/Planning, Parks & Recreation and Public Works Committee Meeting. The council committee of Heather Rousey and Ed Davis concluded there is definite need for the roadway.
Neighbors in Eaglemont and Sinclair Heights have just one good way out today, at an intersection at Chain Lake and Rainier View roads. The wait time to turn onto Chain Lake is increasing. The other way out is a back route.
“We need to address the traffic here and need to do it now,” Rousey said, noting that a few years ago, a fire emergency blocked the whole road and nobody could get in or out of the neighborhood.
This north-south road would need to cross land marked for the future U.S. 2 bypass, Davis pointed out. Rousey countered that a bypass around Monroe is often talked about, but “I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
191st Street SE could be packaged into a larger bundle of projects to be considered for 2022 by the full City Council, city administrator Deborah Knight said last week.
The city’s projects list has changed from just three years ago. It is currently finishing up new all-weather fields at Lake Tye Park and is acquiring land for the future North Hill Park; both were funding needs at the time of the discussion in 2019 when 191st Street SE was shelved.
The options before it was shelved were to either route the road to connect with the Chain Lake Road roundabout or to connect to Galaxy Way.
