MONROE - Kiryas Joel plans to create a shortcut to Route 17 for drivers headed to and from the village by building a road connection that would bypass a bottleneck in neighboring Monroe.
The new road segment would be built on a 22-acre land strip in Monroe that Kiryas Joel and the Ezras Choilim Health Center bought last month for $4.3 million. The health center, which is located in Kiryas Joel, contributed to the purchase because it is said to be considering building a new medical facility on part of that land.
The road is a piece of a longer parallel road that was conceived more than 15 years ago and shelved for lack of funding for the work, last estimated to cost $30 million. That overall project was known as the Larkin Drive Extension and would stretch a mile and a half next to Route 17 across Monroe, from Route 208 to County Route 105.