Barricaded frontage road’s future debated

By Randy Bell
More than two years since the City of Clinton was told that the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) was working on a plan to permanently close a frontage road in front of McDonald’s on Springridge Road, a temporary barricade remains in place, forcing motorists to drive through a shopping center parking lot to reach McDonald’s and other nearby businesses.

Jeff Speed with Litchfield Clinton LLC, which owns the shopping center, would like to see the frontage road reopened.

“If I block the road off in front of your house, and I redirect everybody through your driveway and yard, you’re eventually going to get upset about it,” Speed said after appearing before the Board of Aldermen at a March 2 work session.

Speed said the extra traffic has led to increased maintenance costs for the shopping center parking lot.

“We’ve spent about $30,000 in the last twelve months, where, in a normal year, we would spend $8,000.”

Former mayor Phil Fisher announced in December 2024 that, in consultation with MDOT, he was closing the entrance to the frontage road because of his concern that traffic congestion on the western side of the Springridge Road-Broadway Street intersection had become too dangerous. He said drivers trying to reach the road in front of McDonald’s often had to dart into the path of eastbound cars leaving the shopping center parking lot.

Two months later, McDonald’s sent a letter to the City complaining that the barricade was causing the restaurant to lose business.

“I think it’s affected everybody,” Speed said. “I haven’t interviewed the Starbucks or Taco Bell or the hotel or anybody else, but I don’t really see that anybody has won here.”

At the work session, Mayor Will Purdie said the barricade “looks awful,” but the City doesn’t have the authority to remove it.

“That frontage road and intersection are in MDOT’s right of way, so the City is severely limited in what we can do of our own accord over there,” Purdie said. “MDOT has made a determination that the intersection as it sits is unsafe, so I would like to see some way to either redesign that intersection or open some access a little farther down [Springridge] to allow folks to turn in to make it a little safer and give a little better access to those businesses.”

When Fisher announced the closing of the frontage road in 2024, he said MDOT’S records indicated that eighteen traffic accidents had occurred that were directly related to the frontage road and the confusion among drivers as to who has the right of way at the intersection.

It wasn’t clear as to when those accidents happened, but MDOT says the frontage road was constructed in 1993.

Speed said: “We’ve had that [shopping] center for multiple years, and I realize that maybe there were a few accidents; but we never really saw them.”