Long-delayed Highway 3 project gets new completion date

KANNAPOLIS, N.C. — Since the summer of 2020, construction crews have been working on Highway 3.

The completion date for the entire project was originally set for just a few months later. But over the years, that date has repeatedly been pushed back.

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Channel 9′s Hannah Goetz reported on the long-delayed project in Kannapolis back on December 29. Then, the North Carolina Department of Transportation told her the end of the project was scheduled for spring 2024.

But that deadline has long since passed. It’s mid-July, and was once a four-month project now in its fourth year.

On Thursday, Goetz found out about a new deadline, but not everyone’s buying it.

“It’s very frustrating,” Genetta Hintz said.

She and her husband moved into their home off of Mooresville Road two years ago during construction on Highway 3.

“A lot of it just has to do with the congestion and listening to this all the time,” she said, talking about construction noise.

It’s work she said seems to never end. Noise, closures and even accidents that she, like many others, wonders when they’ll stop.

Highway 3 construction in Kannapolis Since the summer of 2020, crews have been working on Highway 3. The completion date for the entire project was originally set for spring 2022. But over the years, that date has repeatedly been pushed back.

“The roads are beautiful and I’m glad to have them, I just question why it’s taking so long,” Hintz said.

In July of last year, NCDOT said the project would be finished by the end of 2023. Then they said spring 2024. And on Thursday, NCDOT said there will be six more weeks of construction.

Goetz read their statement to Jack Lotito. He laughed.

“If that’s what they say,” he said.

Goetz interviewed Lotito back in December about the same topic.

“It’s been, as my wife puts it, ‘hell,’” he said then.

And now seven months later, his yard and his cars are a mess, which he said is due to the construction dust.

“When the state tells you this is for the greater good, how many people have to suffer?” Lotito said Thursday.

He said a supervisor told him his yard should be restored to its original condition or better by the end of the project.

Come September, Goetz plans to check how it’s coming along.

(WATCH BELOW: NC Highway 3 widening project nearing four years with no end in sight)