McALLEN — The road to State Highway 107 just got a little bit longer and, for city officials, that was cause to celebrate Thursday morning with a ceremony held to unveil a new segment of Bicentennial Boulevard.

The new 1.5-mile segment of Bicentennial Boulevard, which extends from Auburn Avenue to Freddy Gonzalez Road, is now open to public use and brings the roadway that much closer to the ultimate goal of extending all the way to State Highway 107.

(WATCH: Bicentennial Boulevard ribbon cutting)

“We have the existing Bicentennial that goes to the south and extends to the airport and that’s an important corridor for us and for our city,” said City Engineer Yvette Barrera, “so this roadway is going to go essentially from our northern limit at 107 all the way to the airport.”

The construction on the extension first began in December 2019 and the first phase, a .4-mile stretch that began at Trenton Road, opened up earlier this year.

City officials said they expect the third phase, a .9-mile segment from Freddy Gonzalez Road to SH 107, to be completed in September.

The total cost of the project has thus far reached $12.83 million, according to Barrera.

She said the city had secured $10.6 million from federal, state and other local sources for the project and then obtained another $2.4 million through a bond election in 2013.

Barrera said the roadway is going to be a limited access facility because there aren’t many driveways that lead into it.

“It just makes it a facility that’s important for mobility, to be able to get from one side of town to the other,” she said. “Some of our other roadways are more access type of roadways — you want to get from a certain point to a certain point to get to a store, or to get to your place of work. This is more for mobility, to get you across town.”

Additionally, the roadway is expected to reduce congestion along the neighboring 10th and 23rd streets.

“It reduces congestion on those roads also so you don’t have as many delays when you’re going down 23rd and 10th because some of the traffic will move over to this roadway,” Barrera said.

City Manger Roel “Roy” Rodriguez reiterated that the third and final phase is expected to be completed within the 45 to 60 days and praised Barrera and her staff for their work on the project.

“Seventeen years ago, we were moving water lines around here for this project thinking that we were going to do it the next year or two years later, but here we are 17 years later,” Rodriguez said. “But I’ll tell you what, the resiliency of this community is second to none.”


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