MORGANTOWN – They say timing is everything.
That was the case Thursday evening when Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization Policy Board Chair Russ Rogerson’s phone buzzed a few minutes into the board’s most recent meeting.
Executive Director Bill Austin had just started explaining how very close the long-awaited I-79 Harmony Grove interchange project was to receiving federal approval when Rogerson shared his device.
“Oh,” Austin said, surprised. “We just got a notice that the IJR for Harmony Grove has been approved by the Federal Highway Administration. That literally just came over on Chairman Rogerson’s phone.”
The IJR, or interchange justification report, is a foundational step in the process that represents the Federal Highway Administration’s approval to start advancing the project.
On the sending end of the aforementioned text was Glenn Adrian, co-owner of Enrout Properties, the developers of the Morgantown Industrial Park and the driving force behind the Harmony Grove interchange project to connect the park directly to the interstate.
“It’s exciting. Only seven years in the making, but very exciting because this basically paves the way now for the West Virginia Department of Highways to put out a solicitation for engineering,” Adrian said Friday. “Probably somewhere in early spring, they’ll make a selection on who will finish up the engineering. From there, it’s a matter of putting the design together and putting it out to bid. That’ll probably take most of the year, but we’re hopeful that this interchange will be underway in 2027 – the end of 2026 or early 2027.”
Adrian said work on the interchange will likely be kicking off somewhere around the time construction of the new bridge crossing the Monongahela River is wrapping up.
Both projects will vastly improve truck access to the industrial park.
It was actually the pace of progress made on Harmony Grove that gave rise to the bridge.
The Harmony Grove interchange was promised by the state to help bring the massive Mountaintop Beverage facility located in the upper MIP to West Virginia.
Trucks started rolling in and out of the 330,000 square foot plant in May 2023, but due to the complexities of the federal regulatory process involving interstate projects, the DOH couldn’t make good on the interchange in a timely manner.
So, in July 2023, the DOH announced that it was not only going to push forward with the Harmony Grove interchange, but build a bridge across the Monongahela River to the MIP in the meantime.
The bridge, which will connect U.S. 119 (Grafton Road) to the industrial park’s Rail Street via a multi-span bridge, is currently being constructed by Triton Construction for $59.7 million. The state has said the access road and bridge project will be completed in winter 2026.
Adrian said the interchange, which will include a new, wider bridge as well as a number of enhancements between Uffington and the Westover exit, is still estimated in the $40 million range.
“It’ll be a great day when we get this thing completed. It’ll be great for the park, for the trucks and for a lot of people. A lot of people forget, and this is important, that this is all being done with the intention of getting those trucks out of Westover. It’s a safety issue,” Adrian said. “They’re going to be able to get right in, ingress and egress right out of the park onto the interstate, and that’s going to take a heavy burden off Westover. They’ve been so patient and cooperative as the park has grown with all the traffic going through there.”
