ARLINGTON – Businesses along Highway 531 are glad to hear the state is going to fund $39.3 million in improvements to that road.
“We are ecstatic with the full funding for the expansion of SR531,” said Chris Nussbaum, Universal Aerospace Co. Inc. “This would not have happened without the determination of Mayor (Barbara) Tolbert and members of the Arlington City Council, who took every opportunity to remind state legislators of the need for the roadway widening.”
The work from 43rd to 67th Avenue NE will improve traffic safety and economic development in the area. The city has been promoting the project for years, hosting Gov. Jay Inslee to tour the area earlier this year with Tolbert and city staff pointing out the reasons the project is so essential.
The heavily traveled road is a major transportation link between Interstate 5 and State Route 9, serving the Arlington Municipal Airport Industrial
Park, home to more than 170 advanced manufacturing companies, including dozens that are key aerospace suppliers to The Boeing Co. for all of its airliners, from the 747 to the 777X and its new 787.
Those Arlington businesses provide more than 5,500 family wage jobs, including several hundred recently added at Senior/AMT, a primary Boeing supplier that ships more than $500,000 worth of products daily through the Highway 531 corridor.
Public safety is also an issue. The traffic on crowded Highway 531 results in as many as 40 collision accidents annually, often backing up traffic for hours.
Randy Bellon, chief executive officer of Bowman Manufacturing at the airport, said, “The widening of SR531 is great news for local businesses and employees that are impacted by this traffic bottleneck on a daily basis.”
Bellon said, “The effort to widen SR531 has been ongoing for the last twenty years…to go from no funding to full funding in three years is more progress than we had in the previous seventeen.”
John Kooy, president of John H. Kooy Trucking Inc., in Arlington, said, “With the expansion project now secure, I’m looking forward to making Arlington my permanent home for years to come.”
