 There's good news for motorists who travel along Highway 371 from Niswata, Jenkins. All four lanes are now open. Sarah Winkelman was at the ribbon-cutting ceremony today and has more. It's a celebration. That seemed like a long time coming. It went so fast. Now I know that's contradictory to what everyone else believes, like we were here forever. But for us it was fast. It was two years and two months since we first drove up here and started scouting around in the woods and trying to figure out what was going to happen. The Highway 371 project was the first of its kind in the area as it took the form of a design build. Usually we have a plan and we know right away what we're doing and how we're going to get there. In this case we knew where we wanted to end up but not necessarily the details and how we were going to get there. The 50 million dollar project has been in the works for nearly two decades. I was actually the original project manager in 2001 for the development of the environmental statement. So it's been a long time I've been involved with the project so it was nice to see a project with that size finally being completed. It's a massive project that has impacted several local communities and the Paul Bunyan Trail. When we came up and started knocking down the entire North Woods it seemed like you know we were not everybody's friend at all and so we knew we had to slowly back over 2 years we would prove that that we are a good company and we can do this right. The project was originally planned to be completed by the end of October but even with some additional challenges all four lanes are now open and so we had to figure out how to not to let the water go into the ground in all of the sand ground and the design kind of stopped for about 2 months as we had to figure this out because it's a new challenge that no one had met before. A town that once was divided by the highway can now reunite. It really does allow us an opportunity to join the two sides of town together and make a wonderful town center and park so we're very much looking forward to that. Now the only thing left to do is to drive and enjoy. Reporting in Pequot Lakes, Sarah Winckelman, Lakeland News. The crew still has some cleanup to finish but it won't affect traffic. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.