Major Changes Planned For Highway 71 In Portions Of The Lakes Corridor; Public Informational Meeting Set For March 30th

(Arnolds Park)– Some major changes are being proposed for Highway 71 on the south side of Arnolds Park. Dakin Schultz, a planner with the Iowa Department of Transportation’s regional office in Sioux City tells KUOO news it’s part of a major reconstruction of the thoroughfare through the lakes corridor between East View Avenue in Okoboji and 202^nd Street in Arnolds Park. He says it’s planned for the 2023 Fiscal Year and that $12.25 million has been budgeted for the project…Dakin Schultz & Hwy 71 Project01 

“We’re looking at a start in the fall of 2022 and the project will be completed hopefully in three stages. So we would do stage one that fall, so after Labor Day of 2022, we’d have winter shutdown and then in the spring of 2023 we would do stage two, and then we would shut down at Memorial Day and then after Labor Day in 2023 we would resume work and hopefully complete the project.”

Schultz says they’ll stage the project in an attempt to have as little impact as possible on motorists…Dakin Schultz & Hwy 71 Project02 

“Currently we’re looking at reconstruction, so we would do one lane at a time leaving traffic in one direction. So we would have a detour utilizing Iowa 86 and Iowa 9, but we would leave traffic in a southbound direction. There would also include in this, we would reconstruct the sidewalks, the trail, we would be adding traffic signals at Linden and at Lake Avenue, we would be looking at converting U.S. 71 from Lake south to 202nd Street from a four lane undivided to a three lane to match the rest of the corridor.”

Schultz says a public informational meeting for the project is set for 5:30 pm March 30^th and that it will be held electronically…Dakin Schultz & Hwy 71 Project03 

“There will be a pre-recorded presentation to walk everyone through the project and then after the presentation we will open up the line. For those that attend the meeting and have questions they will be able to utilize the chat box function on the computer and type in their question and we will have a group of panelists live that will answer the questions as they come in. If there’s questions following the meeting, they will be able to email the D.O.T and we will respond to those questions.”

More information regarding the project can be found by clicking here