The City of Hastings and the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) are holding another meeting regarding the proposed project for Highway 61 between 4th Street and 36th Street. The meeting will be held at Hastings City Hall on March 7 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. A presentation will occur at 5:15 p.m. followed by an open house style meeting.

There have been multiple meetings held prior on this project, one in May of 2022 and one in August of 2022. At those meetings, concerns were expressed over many of the proposed changes, mostly changes that included completely closing most of the left turn lanes on the full length of the Vermillion Street corridor.

The most concerning section was the Midtown area between 8th Street just north of Green Mill and 16th St. just north of the LeDuc Mansion. The first concern was how to handle the intersections around Todd Field, primarily for Highway 55, where nearly 15,000 cars travel through the intersection of Highway 55 and Highway 61 each day. This high traffic area causes extended backups on Highway 61 throughout the day during normal traffic and really becomes congested during peak traffic hours. There have been multiple ideas looked at in this area, some scenarios involve one way traffic around Todd Field, others include turning 10th Street by Todd Field into a plaza and eliminating the road.

The second biggest concern is how closing the left-hand turn lanes as well as multiple parking lot entrances would affect southbound traffic’s access to H& R Block, Edward Jones, Smokin’ Oak Express, Duff’s Meats 2, House of Wine, Jersey Mikes, Fortune Cookie, Miracle Ear, Dunkin’ and Dairy Queen. The last five of those businesses only have access to them from Vermillion Street and cannot be accessed from the back side using Sibley Street.

Closing the left turns for southbound traffic will force all traffic wanting to go to businesses like Dairy Queen, Dunkin’ and Jersey Mike’s to turn left at 15th, then left on Sibley Street, then left on 14th to return to Vermillion Street so they can turn right on to that and head back north.

Northbound traffic’s access to the businesses in the Midtown Shopping Center like the Bierstube and Yaun’s Buffet along with Perkins and the other businesses that share that block would be negatively impacted as well. The proposal in the included graphic from the MnDOT shows there would only be left hand turn access for southbound drivers to turn in to the northernmost to The Smokin’ Oak Express lot.

There will be no left-hand turn accesses for those heading northbound on Vermillion Street until the left turn onto Highway 55. That means to circle back to Perkins and the surrounding businesses, you need to know your way through the residential area behind Lawrence Interiors since that is the nearest left turn into that area.

The project team has been collecting traffic data as well as community input and utilizing other transportation analytics to determine courses of action along the corridor. The project is evaluating the transportation needs and potential improvements for safety and mobility for all modes of transportation and all users along the corridor. The team is working to follow the people movement plan that the city of Hastings has created. More details about the project, including the people movement plan, can be found at https://www.dot.state.mn.us/metro/projects/hwy61hastings/.