A consultant being hired by Broward County to recommend whether to complete the missing link of McNab Road could benefit if the link is built because he owns an office building on a dead-end section of the road.

Area residents who oppose completion of the link question whether the engineer, Craig A. Smith, will conduct an unbiased study.

In 1983, Smith and a partner built an office building, McNab Executive Plaza, on a two-block, two-lane stretch of McNab east of Andrews Avenue. The street comes to a dead end just west of Interstate 95.

Pompano Beach residents who oppose completing McNab and turning the road into a new east-west thoroughfare say Smith’s property interest may sway him to recommend the McNab Road project instead of another option: the widening of Northeast 62nd Street in Fort Lauderdale.

“Whether there’s dishonesty or just the appearance of dishonesty, this makes me very unhappy,” said Joyce Tarnow of the McNab Road Coalition, a Pompano Beach group trying to block the widening.

Smith and officials on a county advisory panel that selected his firm, Craig A. Smith & Associates, said they see no conflict.

“Of course I have no (conflict of) interest,” Smith said. “I had never even considered the matter.”

The county already plans to widen McNab Road in front of Smith’s office building as part of a $7 million project to complete McNab between Powerline Road and Dixie Highway.

If hired by the county, Smith’s firm would recommend whether to build a final missing link of McNab, east of Dixie, and whether to widen two-lane McNab between Dixie and Federal highways, officials said. The study also would look at traffic needs on 62nd Street and Commercial Boulevard.

The value of Smith’s office building, now assessed at $2 million, and the rents he could charge there would rise slightly if the road work were done, said Tom Powers, vice president of Goodkin Research Inc.

County Commissioner Nicki Grossman said Smith appears to have a conflict of interest. She said she would ask officials to investigate, and if the project would enhance Smith’s property, she will push for another consultant.

“It’s a hand’s length relationship; I always prefer arm’s length,” Grossman said. “This is a very controversial project. We must be clear that this is an unbiased consultant.”

Smith and those who chose him said they see no conflict because his study would not include the road in front of his building.

“There’s no connection between the two” projects, Smith said.

“This is a fringe issue,” said Lee Billingsley, transportation director for the county public works department. “The decision what to widen will be made by the county, not the consultant.”

The county originally planned to widen Northeast 62nd Street between Ninth Avenue and Federal Highway. Smith’s firm was chosen in 1986 to design the project, Billingsley said.

But protests from neighbors and Fort Lauderdale commissioners in early 1987 forced the county to look at widening McNab Road instead.

The advisory panel decided to renegotiate Smith’s contract to include the study, Billingsley said.