Poplar Bluff, Missouri

BVM: Any major infrastructure projects ongoing or planned for the city? Halter: “We’re working on a four-lane project on Highway 67, south of town. When it’s finished, we’ll have four lanes in and out of Poplar Bluff – north, south, east, and west. Our ultimate goal is to have Interstate 57 come through our community; it currently stops about 45 miles from here in Sikeston. We’ve already got approval from the federal government to have that area designated as interstate, but it’s an ongoing project, and the biggest part of that project for us is this Hwy. 67 South. We took it to a vote of our people last August and it passed 88 to 12 percent; an enormous margin of victory to have the funding to get the rest of that final 12 miles four-laned all the way to the Arkansas state line. We were also awarded almost $11 million in infrastructure grants through the State of Missouri, one of which was the Governor’s Transportation Cost Share grant, to help with that project and we’re now pursuing federal dollars through a BUILD grant. That project should have the first leg started in early summer. “I mentioned Hwy. 67 South, but before that, our citizens taxed themselves to four-lane a highway from here to St. Louis. It’s 50 miles and connects to what was already a four-lane, but before, it was just a two-lane road. Of those 50 miles, not one square inch is in the city limits of Poplar Bluff, but the city voters voted to tax themselves because they saw the importance of that infrastructure. “We’ve had two major projects in our industrial park where we pulled funds from every organization we could find, including a local match. One was a bypass for the industrial park, which took people from our main four-lane highway straight into the park, and the other was an overpass of a Union Pacific Class 1 rail line, which prevented people from getting in and out of our industrial park in an efficient and safe manner. So, we have an overpass, now, so they don’t have to wait for those trains at a rail