Ivey breaks ground for north-south corridor through Marengo County
Gov. Kay Ivey presided over the groundbreaking ceremony at the Linden Industrial Park Friday as the proposed West Alabama Corridor was unveiled to mayors, county commissioners and dignitaries from Clarke, Marengo, Hale and Tuscaloosa counties in attendance.
The plan, shown on a map displayed at the ceremony, has the new highway extending from Thomasville to Linden along U.S. Hwy. 43, then leaving the route east of the county seat and joining Alabama 69 all the way to Tuscaloosa.
The project is part of Ivey’s Build Alabama initiative made possible by the gas tax approved by the legislature in 2019.
“This is more than just another Build Alabama project,” Ivey said in her remarks. “This groundbreaking today (is) a symbolic gesture of the state’s commitment to complete a four-lane highway from Mobile all the way to Tuscaloosa and, in the future, even further north.”
She said the idea of the corridor can be traced to the time of Gov. Jim Folsom in the 1950s. She thanked the members of the legislature for “passing a bold, ambitious Build Alabama infrastructure plan. Everybody knows you can’t build roads and bridges with Monopoly money.”
Ivey also said the initiative could not have happened without cooperation from both political parties. She said to attract more companies and provide more jobs, good roads and bridges are a must.
Ivey, a Camden native, received a standing ovation when she recalled what the people of Wilcox County used to say: “If we only had a governor who would show a little bit of interest in the Black Belt, just imagine what we could do. Well, here we are!”
She continued, “We are turning a page as well as some dirt on hearing about what the Black Belt and West Alabama might become one day. We are writing a new chapter on all we are about to accomplish.”
Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox thanked Ivey for her courage and leadership in making the corridor a reality. “Your legacy is going to be new jobs. Your legacy is going to be safer highways. Your legacy is going to be a greater Alabama,” he said.
“Sometimes I think we all wonder if government works anymore,” Maddox continued. “What the governor and the legislature and all of us together showed that rural and urban can work together, Republicans and Democrats can work together and that together there is nothing we can’t accomplish.”
Thomasville Mayor Sheldon Day, now in his seventh term, said he started working 25 years ago with the late Demopolis Mayor Austin Caldwell and the late Linden Mayor Pat Vice to make the north-south route a reality. He continued the effort with Maddox and former Demopolis Mayor Mike Grayson.
“We’ve got a job to do, folks,” said Day. “We’ve got to make sure we’re ready. It’s going to take 10 or more years for this corridor to be built. We need to go to work right now to make our communities better, making our region better and working together, because we know, if we’re not ready, it will only be a gate through our communities instead of a gateway to our communities.”
Others speaking at the ceremony included Tony Cherry, Choctaw County Commission and a member of the Rebuild Alabama committee; Sen. Bobby Singleton, and Rep. A.J. McCampbell.