Business View Magazine | March 2019

223 spur economic growth in the area and improve the ease of travel to, from, and within Mau- melle. “The citizens passed a sales tax in No- vember 2018 to fund the $14 million cost of a new interchange,” says Watson. “Construction has started and should be complete within about 10 months. The interchange is being built in an undeveloped wooded area, so the plan is for economic and community develop- ment to grow there. We hope to gain large retail lifestyle centers, hotels, motels, restau- rants, and smaller commercial retail establish- ments. It could also be an employment center also, like an office park, but not industrial.” Because there was no access to the proposed interchange location, the city passed another sales tax to build a new roadway called White Oak Crossing – a mile of new development which included constructing a bridge over White Oak Bayou. Watson admits, “The feasibil- ity study was first done in 1996 and when I ran for mayor in 2006, that’s what I was running on: ‘Let’s get the interchange built!’ If you’d asked me back then if it would take 12 years, I’d have said you were crazy. But here we are, and it’s just now getting under construction. There were a lot of environmental issues to get through, but we knew that the future of Maumelle was out in that area, because we’re landlocked on the south by the Arkansas River, and kind of landlocked on the east by North