The stretch of Skyland Boulevard between McFarland and Highway 69 was resurfaced last year, and most South-of-Town drivers barely registered the change. This summer is different. The paving crews have crossed McFarland and are working their way east toward Pleasant Hill Drive, which means the section of Skyland that carries you home from a Hargrove Road errand or a Cypress Creek dinner is now the section under cones after dark.
That single fact reorders a lot of small decisions this July. Where you fill up. When you leave for the grocery run. Whether you cross Skyland from the south or drop down to I-20/59 and come back up. The point of this post is not that the project is inconvenient. It is that it makes visible something South-of-Town residents have been quietly living with for a couple of years: the corridor's evening rhythm has been drifting east and south, and the overnight work is a temporary permission slip to notice.
The project, in the terms that actually matter
The current phase runs from McFarland Boulevard to Pleasant Hill Drive. The Alabama Department of Transportation resumed nighttime resurfacing on Skyland Boulevard on Monday, June 8, continuing from McFarland Boulevard to Pleasant Hill Drive in Tuscaloosa. APAC-Alabama was awarded the project at $6.89 million. Work is scheduled to continue through fall 2026, weather permitting; lane closures will not be allowed from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m., and lane closures will not be allowed on Saturdays when the University of Alabama has a home football game.
The resurfacing itself is the least interesting part. What is worth putting on your mental map is where the geometry of Skyland is about to change:
- Hargrove Road — left-turn lane lengthening
- Palisades Drive — left-turn lane lengthening and signal work
- Cypress Creek Avenue — same treatment
The project will also include left-turn lane lengthening and enhancements at Hargrove Road, Palisades Drive and Cypress Creek Avenue. If you live off any of those three streets, the drive you take now is not the drive you will be taking in October. That is the durable change hiding inside a temporary inconvenience.
For the two months when the University schedule empties out, the timing works in residents' favor:
Lane closures happen between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., and Alabama's home-game Saturdays are protected. In July, the entire month is protected. There is no home game.
Which is to say the worst-case night on Skyland this summer is still a night you can drive it. The workaround is not avoidance. It is adjusting the clock by an hour.
What's actually east of McFarland now
The eastern half of Skyland is not the strip it was five years ago. Hargrove, Palisades, and Cypress Creek all feed neighborhoods that have added rooftops faster than the corridor has added lanes. ALDOT leaders said about 20,000 cars and trucks travel through that area every day. That count is why ALDOT is treating a four-tenths-of-a-mile stretch of Skyland at McFarland as its own separate project, with a June 23 public meeting held at Skyland Elementary School to gather input on redesigning the intersection.
The bigger structural question, the one that has been the elephant in every South-of-Town planning meeting for a decade, is what happens at Skyland and 69 South. ALDOT originally planned to construct a flyover bridge that would have moved travelers on Highway 69 South well above its current intersection with Skyland Boulevard, where traffic regularly congests; some precursor projects were completed, but the lion's share of the work was supposed to start in 2024 and take about three years to complete, and those plans were indefinitely postponed over concerns about construction costs.
The replacement is more modest. "The project includes widening SR-69 to add one northbound and one southbound lane from Skyland Boulevard through the I-20/59 interchange," ALDOT said. ALDOT spokesperson John McWilliams said the proposed design does not require a bridge and would take about 18 months to complete. If you have been holding your breath for the flyover, you can exhale. The corridor you live on this summer is more or less the corridor you will live on in 2028, just with two extra lanes south of Skyland and cleaner turn geometry at three intersections.
Where the regulars are eating while Skyland is under lights
The dining center of gravity for South of Town has been sliding down 69 for a while. Taylorville used to be the place you passed through on the way to Moundville. It is now the place you actually eat dinner.
The clearest example opened last winter in the old Philly's building. Tony's Italian Grill hosted a soft opening for lunch and dinner, a family-owned restaurant aiming to serve authentic Italian food made with fresh ingredients. The lunch menu primarily features pastas and salads, and the dinner menu opens up with steak and seafood specials, baked pastas and several signature Italian dishes supplemented by an array of appetizers and desserts, including fresh, house-made garlic knots. The restaurant is at 6601 Highway 69 South.
The retail follows. The Walmart Neighborhood Market that was approved for the Hillcrest end of the corridor is still working its way through the pipeline. The Tuscaloosa City Council voted to annex and rezone around 2 acres of undeveloped land at 8600 Highway 69 South in Hillcrest for a new grocery store and fuel station, where developers plan to build a Walmart Neighborhood Market first proposed and approved in 2015 but never built. Building permits were issued for a $12.6 million store and a $2.6 million fuel station. If you live south of Skyland, that store will eventually shorten a grocery run by fifteen minutes each way.
The practical implication for a July weeknight: the food and errands you might once have crossed Skyland to reach are increasingly downhill of it. The nighttime cones matter less if you are heading away from McFarland rather than through it.
The escape valve is closer than you think
The other thing this summer has clarified is how underused Hurricane Creek Park is by the people who live nearest to it. Turn east off 69 and it is a short drive to a piece of ground most Tuscaloosa residents describe as somewhere else.
Hurricane Creek Park is a 249-acre natural area managed by the Tuscaloosa County Park and Recreation Authority. It features approximately 7 miles of trails, and a creek with multiple swimming holes, rope swings, and waterfalls. The geology is the reason to go in July specifically. The plants are nice, but the backdrop is spectacular: tall sandstone cliffs with beautiful "box work" formations and a creek with sandstone boulders. To see Hurricane Creek today is to see, on a smaller scale, what the Black Warrior River looked like before it was dammed; it is the last free-flowing Appalachian-type stream that can be seen before the Black Warrior River reaches the Fall Line at Tuscaloosa.
For a corridor whose water access otherwise means a drive to a lake, that matters. The west end of the parking lot is only 50 yards from the creek itself, and one of the larger beach areas. Bring the shoes with grip. The rocks are slick.
The one-line thesis
South of Town spent the last decade watching its road plans get postponed, redesigned, and split into smaller pieces. The result is a summer in which the corridor's actual improvements are quiet, incremental, and happening while everyone sleeps. The neighborhoods along Hargrove, Palisades, and Cypress Creek will end 2026 with longer turn lanes and fresh asphalt. The neighborhoods along 69 South will end it with a wider road below Skyland and a grocery store still in the pipeline. And Hurricane Creek will keep doing what it has done since the Fall Line was drawn.
The change you feel this July is the schedule. The change you keep is the geometry.
If you are thinking through what any of this means for a home you own or one you have been quietly watching along Hargrove, Palisades, Cypress Creek, or the 69 South corridor, Caitlin Tubbs Wilson is here to talk it through at the pace of a conversation rather than a pitch. Start Your Real Estate Journey.
