By Robert Tomlinson
News Director
FABIUS TWP. — Two roads that have gotten significant traffic increases in the last several years in Fabius Township will be reconstructed next year.
On Wednesday, Nov. 13, the Fabius Township Board approved their annual road work contract with the St. Joseph County Road Commission, which includes nearly 10 miles of road projects around the township that will be done in 2025.
Chief among those projects will be a reconstruction and rebuild of both Roberts Road and Millard Road, which just recently received a change to the intersection of the two roads to make it safer for traffic. The 1.57-mile project will see Roberts Road reconstructed on the stretch from Coon Hollow Road to Broadway Road, while Millard Road will be reconstructed on the stretch from Roberts Road to Walmart.
There will be hot-mix asphalt used to rebuild both roads, and it will also make the currently-dirt road stretch of Roberts Road from Broadway to Millard paved for the first time.
The total cost of the project is $604,450, with the township paying half of the cost, approximately $302,225, as part of the 50-50 match program from the Road Commission. Township Supervisor Dan Wilkins said the project has been talked about being done for the past several years.
Wilkins added that the Broadway-to-Millard stretch of Roberts Road was left intentionally unpaved for years, because there weren’t many houses on that stretch and the township didn’t want people using the road as a shortcut to get to Walmart and have residents on Millard Road “put up with all the traffic.” However, he said the reconstruction of U.S. 131 in Three Rivers in the past few years, and the increased traffic on Roberts Road from people avoiding using the highway because of the Michigan Left turns that were installed, “forced” the township to rethink that stretch.
“What changed was when 131 got redone, and they did all those Michigan Lefts, well guess what, everybody started using it even though it’s a dirt road,” Wilkins said. “Now we have the traffic anyway, so we’re kind of being forced, I guess you could say, into paving it. Now, it just makes more sense. Times change, our ideas have to change, we can’t just be stuck in the mud, and it’s time to move on to a paved road there.”
In a November 2023 Fabius Township meeting, Township Clerk Carol Wilkins noted that, at the time, approximately 500 cars per day go down that particular stretch of Roberts Road.
Wilkins admitted that Millard Road will have more traffic because of the project, but said the reconstruct will bring a nicer road to the area.
“Right now, Millard is one of the worst roads we have in our township. I feel bad for people in our township who live on roads like that and they put up with it,” Wilkins said. “Even though it’s expensive, to me it’s a quality-of-life issue, and we need to get it taken care of.”
The reconstructs are expected to start sometime in summer 2025.
The Millard/Roberts project is the only road project in 2025 that Fabius Township will be paying for. The rest of the projects on the docket in the township for 2025, which the Road Commission will be paying all of, will be sealcoat projects on Spence/Avery Roads, Harder Road from Countyline to Roberts, Mohney Lake Road from Countyline to Day, Gearharts/Lance Roads, Greenfield Court, Kerr Creek Road, Pleasantview Court, Bidleman Road, the Ridgeview Subdivision, Vernon Road, Westwood Road, Dutch Settlement Road, and Abbey Road. The total cost of all the sealcoat projects combined is $288,000.
In other business…
- The board approved an update to the Clear Lake special assessment district, increasing the SAD by 9.5 percent for 2025 to collect approximately $16,863.
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@wilcoxnewspapers.com.
