Drive Pooler Parkway from the residential stretch near Clear Lake Way toward I-95 Exit 104 this fall and you'll pass the Pine Barren Road work zone and survey stakes near the Walmart driveway before you reach Tanger Outlets. A few miles further, near Benton Boulevard and Mill Creek Circle, contractors haven't broken ground yet, but the paperwork that will send them there just got filed.
It looks like the whole corridor is under siege at once. It isn't. Pooler Parkway is being rebuilt in a specific sequence, by the same engineering team, one intersection at a time, and the order matters if you're trying to guess how long any of this actually takes.
The Signal Nobody Noticed Finish
The quietest of the three projects wrapped first. On June 30, 2026, the City of Pooler announced that a new traffic signal had gone active at Pooler Parkway and Clear Lake Way. There was no ribbon cutting, no public hearing covered by local news. One intersection, one signal, done.
That's easy to miss if you don't drive that block regularly, but it matters for what comes next. It's proof the city isn't announcing projects it can't finish. Clear Lake Way was the smallest piece of a much longer plan, and it's already behind you.
The Loud Middle: Pine Barren Road
The next segment west is the one most Pooler residents have actually noticed. In March 2026, the city began preliminary site work on a $4.4 million intersection expansion at Pine Barren Road and Pooler Parkway, following city council approval the previous December. The project widens roughly 3,200 linear feet of roadway and adds new intersection signals, sidewalks, a multi-use trail, and drainage improvements, according to WTOC's coverage of the groundbreaking.
The city's own notice was candid about the timeline: early work would have minimal traffic impact, but heavier construction was expected to ramp up closer to the end of the school year, meaning the real disruption landed over the summer rather than the spring. Lead design engineer Rhodes Hunt, P.E., described the scope during an earlier public hearing on the project, as reported by WSAV:
"The improvements consist of signal timing upgrades as well as additional capacity improvements. So, we'll be building several turn lanes, primarily on Pine Barren Road, to help with some of the traffic needs that are here today and coming. We're also building a bike path."
Hunt also noted that the bike and pedestrian facilities would eventually connect the corridor to the school system, a detail that matters more to a household with kids walking or biking to campus than any traffic count does.
Here's the part worth sitting with. Back when this project was first presented to the public, the city's own estimate was that shovels could be in the ground by the summer after the hearing, with a possible 2026 completion. Site work didn't actually begin until March 2026, roughly eight to nine months later than that original estimate. That's not a criticism of the project. It's a data point. When a Pooler road project publishes a completion window, treat it as the earliest plausible date, not the guaranteed one.
The Bid That's Open Right Now
The newest and largest phase of this corridor rebuild hasn't broken ground yet. On August 28, 2026, the City of Pooler published bid documents for work at Pooler Parkway, Benton Boulevard, Mill Creek Circle, and the I-95 Southbound Ramps. A pre-bid conference was held at Pooler City Hall on September 16, 2026. Sealed bids are due at 2:00 p.m. on October 7, 2026, at which point they'll be publicly opened.
This is the segment that actually touches Exit 104 and the approach to Tanger Outlets, so it's worth knowing exactly what's changing:
| Intersection | What's being installed |
|---|---|
| Pooler Parkway @ I-95 Southbound Ramp | New traffic signal |
| Pooler Parkway @ Mill Creek Circle | New traffic signal |
| Pooler Parkway @ Benton Boulevard / Tanger Outlets Boulevard | New traffic signal |
The full scope covers about 3,750 linear feet of roadway, more than the Pine Barren segment, plus sidewalks and drainage work. Once a contractor is selected, the winning bidder has 540 calendar days to complete the work after a ten-day notice-to-proceed period. That's roughly 18 months from whenever the contract officially starts, which given the October 7 bid opening likely puts substantial completion somewhere in the first half of 2028, assuming no repeat of the Pine Barren slippage.
Same Engineer, One Corridor
It would be easy to read these as three unrelated city projects that happened to land on the same road. They aren't. Rhodes Hunt, P.E., the engineer quoted on the Pine Barren Road project, is also listed as the engineer of record on the right-of-way plans for the Benton Boulevard, Mill Creek Circle, and I-95 Southbound Ramps project. One engineering team has been moving down Pooler Parkway from the residential interior toward the interstate, intersection by intersection, for more than a year.
That continuity is the actual news here. Pooler Parkway isn't reacting to complaints in whatever order they arrive. It's executing a corridor-length plan that started at Clear Lake Way, moved to Pine Barren Road, and is now bidding out the stretch that carries the most retail and interstate traffic in the city.
What This Means If You Drive This Stretch
If your daily route touches Pooler Parkway between Clear Lake Way and I-95, here's the practical read. The Clear Lake Way signal is finished and you won't see cones there again. Pine Barren Road is in its heaviest construction window now, with turn lanes and a bike path still being built. The Benton Boulevard, Mill Creek Circle, and I-95 Ramps segment hasn't started construction yet. Bids aren't even opened until October 7. If you're planning around this corridor for the next year or two, expect the Pine Barren disruption to ease first, followed by a new work zone opening near the outlets and the interstate ramps sometime after the bid is awarded this fall.
The sequencing also explains something that might otherwise seem strange: why the city hasn't shut down the whole parkway at once. Each project is scoped, bid, and built as its own contract, which means only one major work zone tends to be active on this stretch at a time rather than the entire corridor closing simultaneously.
None of this changes what Pooler Parkway is for. It's still the fastest way from the residential neighborhoods around Clear Lake Way to Tanger Outlets, to I-95 Exit 104, and to the schools the Pine Barren bike path is designed to reach. The road is getting rebuilt because it's used hard, not because it's failing.
If you're weighing a move near this corridor, or trying to understand how a couple more years of signal work might affect a commute from Pooler toward I-95, Lachandra Bodison can walk you through what's actually happening street by street. Schedule a free consultation and get a straight answer, not a guess.
