ALLIANCE - Challenges of removing old buildings, constructing a road over wetlands and sand hills, and dodging weather led to a meaningful celebration for a new corridor for growth and mobility in the Nebraska Panhandle Monday morning.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, Alliance Mayor Mike Dafney, Nebraska Department of Transportation Director John Selmer, and representatives from the Alliance Chamber of Commerce, Adams Industries, and Kimball County Transit Services attended a nearly 15-minute long presentation, 20 miles south of Alliance, for the opening of the Heartland Expressway.

Ricketts says the major road project - which, when completed, will provide multi-lane, divided highway access between Rapid City, South Dakota and Denver, Colorado - is a long-term strategy to develop more trade through Nebraska.

"With the United States, Mexico, and Canada trade agreement being resigned, it's going to continue to develop trade between the three countries, and this is an important corridor for that," Ricketts said. "It's another alternative to I-25, and moves that traffic a little further east into Nebraska, which we think will help with our economic development here."

Construction on the $32 million, 14-mile project started in March 2021. It was funded by the Nebraska Department of Transportation, thanks in-part to an $18.3 million INFRA Grant. When finished, the Heartland Expressway will go through Alliance, Scottsbluff, Kimball, and Brush.

Dafney says the corridor development plan started 28 years ago. It outlined the benefits of a four-lane highway - from the front range in Colorado to South Dakota - would provide.

"You could say Alliance is a little bit of poster boy for that outline," Dafney said. "Five businesses have located on the Heartland with its development: Maverick, Runza, Holiday Inn Express, Pepsi Co. of Lincoln, Bomgaars relocated, and we're waiting on an extended stay hotel to go up there. What that outline did was give us a blue-print of what we hoped was going to take place. It did."

The next piece of the project, connecting the new section at Angora Hill to Minatare, is already in its planning stages.

According to Ricketts, the expressway will be safer to travel, promote commerce, and develop economic development.

"When you're bringing more traffic through, you're bringing more commerce," Ricketts said. "That's people who are going to stop, they're going to buy gas, and they're going to buy food. That's all great for economic development. That's part of what the benefit of creating this infrastructure is about."

Over one million cubic yards of dirt had to be moved by Paul Reed Construction to develop the new stretch of road in northern Morrill County. Contractors IHC Scott, and the NDOT, used over 358,000 cubic yards of concrete to finish the project.

Warner Construction helped resurface the northbound lanes that used over 75,000 tons of asphalt.