Near the height of Monday's dog day afternoon, a backhoe rumbled through the construction zone along East Brainerd Road headed toward the Westview neighborhood, and behind the slow-moving machine, a procession of impatient drivers crept along the two-lane road, waiting for an opportunity to go around.
From beside the locally famous, multistory white birdhouse her father put up here 65 years ago, Jonnie Allen watched the cars slog by her house. For several minutes, it would be impossible to pull out of her driveway because of the backup.
And this is nothing, the longtime resident said. It has taken her 10 minutes before to get out onto East Brainerd Road.
"If I won the lottery, I might buy another little place somewhere, just to get away," Allen said.
By the numbers
* 20,000: Estimated number of daily drivers along East Brainerd Road * $23 million: Estimated cost of widening project * 2: Number of years expected to complete widening project
She considers herself a casualty of East Brainerd's progress, the transformation of the community from a getaway, rural part of Hamilton County to a real estate hot spot, where the people with the money want to be.
"This is the place to move if you're going to move," she said. "Move to East Brainerd."
The latest perceived consequence of the growth out here is the expansion of East Brainerd Road, or at least a two-mile portion of it, starting around the Grays Road intersection and spanning to about where Bel-Air Road comes in.
This is where East Brainerd Road's estimated 20,000 daily drivers are funneled from five lanes down to two, if you're going toward Westview. The result most days is slow-moving, regular traffic jams, especially during the school year.
The state is trying to fix the bottleneck by extending five lanes - two lanes in each direction, with a continual middle turning lane - another couple of miles.
The road-widening project will cost an estimated $23 million and take around two years to complete. And that's on top of the years already spent on environmental studies and permits and purchasing more than 100 properties to make way for the road.
"We don't just all of a sudden decide, 'Hey, we're going to build a road here,'" said Jennifer Flynn, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Transportation.
There are three multifaceted phases to any project, she said, with the last phase being construction - which just began on East Brainerd Road.
She said the state road department studied going five lanes all the way out to Ooltewah-Ringgold Road, but the money just isn't available right now.
Flynn said state officials were happy to be green-lit for even this two-mile widening stint, a year after a scare over federal highway dollars put many state road projects in jeopardy.
"East Brainerd just happened to get the funding this time," she said. "We're glad that we're able to do this project."
East Brainerd's local representatives also have celebrated the long-time-coming widening project.
But some locals, like Allen, still don't see the benefit in tearing up residents' yards and spending $23 million on something they don't consider a real, long-term fix.
"If it was going to be really worth it, it'd be different," she said. "But it's not."
Allen thinks that, to be truly effective, the road widening should go all the way to Ooltewah-Ringgold Road now, especially since she has already lost half of her front yard, and a lot of her privacy, to the state.
Crews have marked spots about 30 feet or less from Allen's front door, and they'll tear down the land and slope it toward the new road which will run over her property - actually, "they'll say it's theirs now," Allen said.
"I get blessed with the black plastic in my yard," she said. "And we get to look at all that for who knows how long."
Meanwhile, John Harvey, Allen's neighbor, is watching the project take shape from the other side of East Brainerd Road.
Harvey and his wife live in a small 70-year-old white house already close to the road.
While the other side of the road is taking the brunt of construction, the addition of a bike lane and sidewalk is going to cut into Harvey's property, and when the project is done, he thinks the new sidewalk will run through what used to be his yard.
Even so, Harvey sees positives: drainage off the road will almost certainly be better, he said. And it will be nice to have a sidewalk out here, where now there's barely even a shoulder and it's inadvisable to walk or bike.
But he isn't looking forward to the process.
"I kind of wish they had bought me out," he said, "because I wouldn't have had to put up with this construction."
East Brainerd being a far cry from the quiet community he moved to decades ago, Harvey now directs guests to turn around in his driveway before pulling back out onto East Brainerd Road. He had a concrete addition poured just for getting turned around - trying to back out of here could be dangerous.
"You can't hardly get out of here," he said.
Contact staff writer Alex Green at agreen@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6480.