Officials Break Ground On McWright's Ferry Road Extension Project

TUSCALOOSA, AL — Officials from Tuscaloosa County, the City of Tuscaloosa and the City of Northport broke ground Friday on the highly anticipated McWright's Ferry Road extension project, which will connect Rice Mine Road to New Watermelon Road by bridging North River and connecting to McWright’s Ferry Road.

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As Patch previously reported, the nearly $69 million project — funded primarily with local tax dollars through the Tuscaloosa County Road Improvement Commission (TCRIC) — will also incorporate a pedestrian bridge over North River and a shared-use path which will connect to the Northern Riverwalk.

Work officially began in March, with an expected completion date in late 2025 or early 2026, depending on weather conditions and other factors.

Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox said the project has been a long time coming after first being proposed when he was in the second grade in the late 1970s.

And as the site work begins, Maddox pointed out the city's lead role moving forward.

"Early on in this project, we asked TCRIC for the honor of managing this project ourselves," Maddox said. "Working with our partners at [the Alabama Department of Transportation] we were able to make that happen and make the project cheaper and get the project on time."

Maddox thanked the Tuscaloosa City Council, both past and present, along with the other public partners involved in the effort, including former Tuscaloosa City Attorney and current Northport City Administrator Glenda Webb, who was central in the negotiations before making the move to Northport City Hall.

Webb was also in attendance at the groundbreaking and spoke to the collaboration of the different governmental bodies — once considered an unlikely concept.

"Seeing the dirt work here is amazing," she said. "It is a large, large project and it is so important to the community as a whole. We're enjoying a new relationship among the government entities where we collaborate more and this is a sign of the collaboration of working through TCRIC."

Tuscaloosa County Probate Judge Rob Robertson spoke on the project as well and praised the work of District 1 County Commissioner Stan Acker as it relates to managing the rapid growth in the northern end of the county.

"This is a massive project that's going to transform this area of our community," he said. "Commissioner Acker has worked tirelessly to improve and try to help manage growth as it heads north in one of the growing areas of our county. This corridor right here, while technically challenging to figure out the right way to do this ... will solve a lot of problems for the residents north of us here."

Indeed, Robertson and Webb both mentioned how the project will greatly improve access for emergency responders, while providing an additional path for traffic.

"We pretty much have one realistic path to ingress and egress from those housing units up north," he said. "So this opens up a more direct and viable path to get folks to and from work and business during the day."

As the ceremony came to a close, Maddox reiterated the theme of collaboration.

"Oftentimes, I hear people say we need more partnerships in our community," he said. "This is one of the dozen of extraordinary partnerships we have with our legislative delegation, the city and the county. So let's break some ground and make this happen."

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