GREEN BAY, Wis. — Fixing the complicated intersection at Packerland Drive and West Mason Street has been a priority of Brown County Highway Commissioner Paul Fontecchio.

In the early morning hours on Monday, changes will be made to that intersection.

“This intersection is right at the top of my priorities because you see the accidents, you see the injuries. We get the reports, we look at them,” Fontecchio said. “The hardest part with this one was coming up with a way to try to accommodate as much access to the businesses as humanly possible and yet address safety at the same time.”

Concrete barriers will go up in the middle of Packerland Drive south of West Mason Street. They will create a right-turn only traffic flow in and out of the surrounding businesses and frontage roads.

“What really brought this to the forefront — and why we’re putting the concrete barriers in and not waiting until June or July to do it — is because we just had two more injury accidents in the month of January,” Fontecchio said. “The pace of these injury accidents isn’t slowing down. How many more people are we going to have that we could prevent?”

(Spectrum News 1/Nathan Phelps)

A larger plan for the intersection includes a roundabout on Packerland Drive that would allow cars to make controlled U-turns into businesses areas.

But the roundabout portion near Trojan Drive is in question due to land acquisition issues with the Oneida Nation. If it comes to fruition, it wouldn’t be built until 2024 or 2025 at the earliest.

American Antiques and Jewelry is located on the frontage road near the intersection. Manager Dan Rothe said he expects to see an immediate impact on business from the traffic change.

“We need easy, safe, traffic. Putting a Band Aid on it with putting the barriers on it and not getting the whole project done is going to inhibit our store dramatically,” he said.

(Spectrum News 1/Nathan Phelps)

Without assurances of the roundabout, he said he’s concerned about a deeper business impact and that it would just move traffic concerns to other sections of the road.

“If this roundabout doesn’t get in, and the whole project doesn’t get done, we will see a change in traffic from out of town,” Rothe said. “If it’s not easy to get here, people don’t get here. If they can’t figure it out right away, they move on to the next thing.”

Fontecchio said he and the county are working with businesses to find a balance between safety and commerce.

“How long do you wait? How many more injury accidents do you have?” he said. “On the one hand, I understand waiting until you can get it all done. But on the other hand, people are getting hurt monthly out there.”