Because of cumulative storm damage, part of Country Club Road has become Bulloch County's latest paved road segment to be closed awaiting repairs. For some drivers approaching Statesboro from the southwest, this requires a new detour from their detour from Cypress Lake Road.
After several inches of rain fell in one night and day two weeks ago, the county closed Country Club Road beginning May 12 in the section that passes Hood Pond.
But damage to the road, with storm water first scouring away the shoulder and slope and then undermining the pavement, had begun with Tropical Storm Debby last August, said interim County Engineer Ron Nelson. For drivers leaving Statesboro on Country Club Road, Forest Heights Country Club itself remains accessible. The closed section begins just west of Saddle Creek subdivision. For traffic bound northeast toward Statesboro from the Cypress Lake direction, Country Club Road is closed past the Hood Road intersection.
"It's really affected the structure of the road," Nelson said, looking at a photo in his office Tuesday. "So the subgrade and everything's been compromised, actually under the structure of the road, so under the asphalt, this whole area right here. This originally started with Debby. It was further damaged by the unnamed storm in early November, and then most recently by what we saw two weekends ago. It eventually just fell apart."
He estimates that the road area with damage is about 500 feet long.
Meanwhile, a portion of adjoining Cypress Lake Road has been closed since the bridge over Dry Branch was damaged by a vehicle impact in a Feb. 25 crash, and engineers have said that road will probably remain closed for about two years while a replacement bridge is designed, approved and built. Now that Country Club Road is partly closed, any drivers who were previously using it to detour westward and then taking County Club Road toward Veterans Memorial Parkway (the U.S. 301 Statesboro Bypass) would now have to turn left from Country Club Road onto Hood Road and then take Pulaski Road to the bypass. Of course, they might also find other route-arounds of their own.
How long might repairs take on Country Club Road?
"I would say it's going to be in the summer of '26 before it can reopen to traffic," Nelson said. "It's got a six-month design to go through to get engineering analysis and get everything on paper to go to bid, and then we'll have a contractor probably take 180 days to actually build. So 180 to design it and 180 to actually put it back into service."
2 years for Cypress Lake
That would still be a year sooner than his predicted reopening time for through traffic on Cypress Lake Road. The Country Club Road repair should be simpler because it doesn't involve a bridge, although there is a compromised "drainage crossing" or culvert.
"With Cypress Lake … we're looking at possibly late summer of '27 to get it back in service," Nelson said. "We're on a one-year design for that bridge replacement."
That's one year before construction can even begin.
In April the county commissioners approved a $378,300 contract with the Marietta-based firm Heath & Lineback Engineers for engineering and design on the Cypress Lake Road bridge replacement. The scope of work includes the surveying, hydrologic study, geotechnical investigation, plans and environmental permitting.
Now county staff is providing information to Kimley-Horn and Associates, the Savannah-based consulting firm that has done water-flow studies for other Bulloch County culvert and bridge projects, for a hydrology and hydraulics report toward the Country Club Road project. A proposed contract for that report may be presented to the commissioners next month, Nelson said. This should be another Federal Emergency Management Agency-qualified project for "hazard mitigation" reimbursement, but that will require a full review by FEMA, and that alone usually takes about 120 days, he said.
Nevils-Denmark goes ahead
Yet another repair of a currently closed, paved roadway segment, the one on Nevils-Denmark Road just south of State Route 46, is now under contract for construction, and Nelson told county commissioners during their Tuesday meeting that he hopes to see that completed and all of Nevils-Denmark Road reopened shortly after Labor Day. Flood waters from Tropical Storm Debby shifted the old double-barrel box culvert there, causing a section of the road to collapse. The commissioners in April awarded the $924,900 construction contract for the restoration, including replacement of the bridge-like culvert, to Reeves Construction.