Sampson rest area reopened

The rest area on U.S. 421 in southern Sampson County reopened on Tuesday after being closed for more than 14 months. It will remain open through October as a seasonal operational for the first time ever, and its future will be reassessed after this year.

The announcement was made by officials with the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), which informed the Sampson County Board of Commissioners on Monday night before releasing an official statement Tuesday morning. The rest area has been closed since Jan. 31, 2020.

It will be staffed 8 hours a day and open to the public 24 hours a day. It will be the first time the rest area operates seasonally, accommodating peak travel season.

“It will be seasonal — that’s the one catch to this,” said Division 3 Engineer Chad Kimes at Monday night’s meeting. “We’re going to keep it open from April to October, based on the seasonal traffic that we have. It can be adjusted as we go into the future.”

Kimes said the seasonal opening is similar to how the NCDOT operates other sites, such as the one at Blowing Rock.

“That’s really good news,” said Board of Commissioners Chairman Clark Wooten of the reopening.

Commissioner Lethia Lee shared that sentiment, saying residents are “enthused” about the reopening.

“I just want to thank (Mr. Kimes) and the DOT for seeing how important this rest area is to Sampson County and the southern end of the county,” said Lee, who shared some of the benefits of the site. “I’m so glad that you and DOT decided to open it back up.”

Kimes said he and Lee previously had internal conversations, which he credited as spurring the reopening decision. To run it seasonally, Kimes said it will cost $50,000 for the seasonal maintenance of the Sampson site. He said visitor numbers will be gauged this year and an update given at a later date.

In early 2020, maintenance costs and low visitor numbers were cited as the reason for the closure of the rest area on U.S. 421 (Taylors Bridge Highway), near Six Runs Creek.

The closure was deemed an effort to reduce expenditures and maintenance contracts. NCDOT officials said in early 2020 that the average cost to maintain the rest area, one of the three-least visited rest areas of the 58 sites in the state in 2019, was $2.40 per user — compared to the average of 61 cents statewide.

“In the effort to reduce expenditures,” Kimes stated in a January 2020 letter to county officials, “our plan is to temporarily close this site upon contract expiration and then pursue a permanent closure.”

In the correspondence, Kimes said maintenance contracts for rest areas across the state were being examined as state cash balances plummeted and hundreds of projects were suspended and delayed. Those contracts were already cut by one-quarter by the beginning of 2020. Sampson became part of that statistic, the U.S. 421 rest area closed upon the expiration of the local maintenance contract at the end of January 2020.

In 2019, there were just 37,230 visitors to Sampson’s rest area and $89,336 spent to maintain it — a cost of $2.40 per user. Meanwhile, the number of visitors to Warsaw’s I-40 rest area was 606,070 last year, and the site cost $282,468.92 to maintain — 47 cents per user.

“The cost to maintain this rest area is the second highest of all 58 sites in the state,” Kimes said in the 2020 letter.

The rest area was built in 1972.

“It’s one of the lowest-used and one of the highest operating costs,” Kimes said last year during a March 2020 meeting of the Sampson County Board of Commissioners. “We were here seven or eight years ago discussing the same things. It’s always looked at when our cash balances get low.”

It was actually back in 2011.

At that time, the state expressed its intention to close the U.S. 421 rest area, an announcement met with such adamant opposition locally that NCDOT pushed back the closure date in favor of further talks, before ultimately leaving it open.

NCDOT officials then similarly pointed to high maintenance costs and traffic shifts from U.S. 421 to I-40 that produced visitor tallies which no longer justified a rest area in southern Sampson. Proponents of keeping the rest area disagreed, touting the rest area as a vital stop on a route that allows for leisurely travel and a pathway for rural tourism.

In 2011, then-DOT secretary Eugene Conti Jr. said the move to close the site was the “fiscally responsible” one in light of current budget shortfalls. He said back in the 1970s and 1980s, the rest area south of Clinton was busy and up-to-date. However when the rest area on I-40 in Warsaw opened in the early 1990s, the U.S. 421 site’s heyday was over.

That Warsaw facility served more than 570,000 visitors annually in 2010. In comparison, the U.S. 421 site had just under 55,000 visitors at a cost of $2.14 per user, more than four times the statewide average for all of North Carolina’s 60 rest areas at $0.52 per user — similar to the numbers a decade later that led to the closure.

“Right now it’s temporary,” Kimes said last year of the closure. “If there’s another influx of funds that come into DOT and cash balances get better, the rest area probably stays open. We just want to explore these other options before we’re told we need to close it permanently.”

Now with the site reopened, Kimes said the issue will be further considered after looking at updated numbers.