STARKVILLE — Updates are coming to Old Mayhew Road.
Tuesday night Starkville Board of Aldermen accepted a bid for Phillips Contracting to rehabilitate the road entirely.
Ward 5 Alderman Hamp Beatty told The Dispatch the road is in desperate need of correction.
“It’s in deplorable condition,” he said. “It’s deteriorated to the point where we’ve lost the surface of the road pretty much. What the appropriation was for is to completely tear up and rebuild the base and (give it) a brand new asphalt overlay, basically rebuild the road.”
Phillips Contracting President Blake Hill said the project will be a full-depth reclamation, meaning the surface and underlying base of the road will be pulverized and graded to serve as a new base before it is repaved. He said the company will also be making drainage improvements. The project will cost a little more than $2 million.
“Nothing is set in stone right now as far as an actual start date,” Hill said. “I would say to expect an early summer start and a finish in the fall.”
Hill said work will start this summer with the goal of completing before the school year starts.
Old Mayhew Road runs from Highway 182 to East Lee Boulevard, which is the easternmost entrance to Mississippi State University, in an area that was annexed by the city in 2022. Beatty, whose ward includes the annexed area, said updating the road is a show of good faith to those citizens.
“As a city official — and I think this would be the consensus of the mayor and board — we want to invest in that part of town because now we’re collecting property taxes,” he said. “… We want to make some investments out there to let people know that we value them being in the city limits, and we’re going to spend their taxes in a way that is appropriate.”
Mayor Lynn Spruill said the improvements will also include reworking the intersection at East Lee Boulevard.
“Instead of going into East Lee the way it does (now), it will make a 90-degree turn onto East Lee,” she said.
Beatty said the current angle of that turn makes it hard to clearly see traffic from both directions. Adding the 90-degree turn, he said, will allow drivers to see from all directions, improving efficiency and safety.
“The current configuration of that road turns off at maybe a 45 degree angle,” he said. “It kind of just curves off, lending itself to people … kind of peeling off that road and not slowing down a lot. You put cars coming off (of East Lee) at a higher rate of speed than they should be and then cars making that significant turn, there’s a possibility there could be a significant accident there.”
The intersection will still be a three-way-stop and drivers coming from East Lee Boulevard will still have the right of way.
While the current project will focus on remediating the road, Beatty is hopeful future phases of improvement will center around improving its look and drivability.
Those future plans could include restriping the road, adding sidewalks and making parking more defined and accessible, he said.
“I want us going forward to make East Lee Boulevard as attractive as possible and appealing to people as they approach campus,” he said. “MSU has done all of that work right there at the edge of campus … and we want to do something as comparable as we can.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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