Curtis Booker, Daily Herald

A stretch of road in American Fork is getting a big makeover.

The city is working to reconstruct 200 South between Mill Pond Road and Interstate 15.

Camden Bird, assistant city administrator for American Fork, says the rehabilitation of the roadway is necessary to accommodate recent growth and infrastructure in the southwest part of the city.

“The area around the FrontRunner station in American Fork has had huge growth and development, which has brought on a lot of traffic and people going through it, and currently, there aren’t a lot of connection points there” Bird said.

200 South had historically been a farming road in the county, near the wetlands of Utah Lake. It’s recently transformed into a thoroughfare many residents and travelers use to navigate the city. The area also is bustling with new apartments, condominiums and townhomes.

Courtesy American Fork City

The quaint city has a population of 37,268 people, according to census data. That’s up about 11% from 2020, when the population was 33,337 residents.

Construction work will include general maintenance, roadway paving and reconstruction, and improvements to sidewalks. Crews also are installing culinary and pressurized irrigation waterlines, plus storm drain structures and piping in the north shoulder closure.

According the city’s website, it’s a multiphase project to widen 200 South. Currently, there are single narrow travel lanes going in each direction, but once completed it will have two lanes of travel each going east and west.

Other plans include a new roundabout at the intersection of 200 South and Frontage Road. A multiuse trail for pedestrians and bikers extending from Mill Pond Road to I-15 is included in the design plan as well as sidewalks along Frontage Road and some trail improvements along 200 South on the east side of I-15 extending to Center Street.

The project is being broken up into several phases. One that has some residents concerned includes an upcoming closure between the area under the I-15 overpass to 500 West.

Weather permitting, this will begin sometime in mid-April, lasting approximately three months. But before that, 200 South just north of I-15 between 300 West and Center Street will first be paved.

An FAQ sheet provided by the city breaks down the impact for drivers.

For people living in the area, city officials say detours will be put in place during the closure. However, they understand this still may cause an inconvenience for access in and out neighborhoods.

“We’re going as quick as we can. Once it’s opened, we think it’ll be a great relief for them” Bird told the Daily Herald.

Residents in the community have asked city leaders why this work wasn’t already done with the anticipation of booming infrastructure.

Bird explains, the city has been working to get the project underway since 2018, when American Fork adopted the Transit Oriented Development Master Plan for the area around the FrontRunner.

American Fork secured $52 million to fund the 200 South improvements through a community reinvestment area.

According the city’s website, the CRA needed to be approved by every taxing entity in the area, such as Alpine School District, the county and local water districts. After six years of effort, the last taxing entity approved the city’s CRA in 2023.

During a town hall meeting last Thursday, community members expressed their concerns surrounding construction and road closures. Among those were scenarios in which emergency responders need to get through the construction area where there aren’t many entry points to the road, as well as traffic congestion during school hours and overall safety of children.

City engineers say they’re factoring in these aspects as reconstruction progresses.

“We try to manage pedestrians, cyclists, vehicles that are driving through there. So a lot of the engineering aspects, we’ve tried to make sure that we’ve designed the road in such a way so that it can accommodate all of those modes of transportation while keeping all of them safe,” American Fork City Engineer Ben Hunter told the Daily Herald.

City leaders say want to hear from those impacted by the construction and they plan to keep to community members abreast as each step of the progress is made.

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