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Ravine causes building committee to reassess nursing home road

The Knox County Board has talked on and off about a direct access road from the highway to county’s nursing home for decades.
They thought they finally had the will and funds to pull off the project.

“It would make the access to the nursing home for emergency vehicles — which is the important thing — much easier,” says Lyle Johnson, new chair of the building committee.

The building committee was charging ahead when they expected the cost of the road to be around $250,000

But Johnson tells WGIL a ravine near where the road would go has made it so the project’s cost balloons or the project’s purpose simplifying access for emergency responders is defeated.

“I don’t think any of us realized the depth of that ravine, which is kind of the sticking point,” Johnson says. “We have to either go over it or around it and to build a bridge over it would be extremely expensive.”

Johnson says estimates have put installing a bridge at an additional $800,000, which he says they never could never recoup, even with the sale of three county owned lots.

The road will have to extend down past the nursing home to Hidden Hills Winery.

The county guaranteed the Hidden Hills owners an access road when they sold them land, but Johnson says that is budgeted for and not an issue.

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