Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 27, 1993 TAG: 9306270096
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FOREST LENGTH: Medium
Says Adler: "How can it fail? Everybody loves Little League baseball, and a baseball park sure beats an industry or prison."
But Adler, who is heading a group of Lynchburg-area Little League boosters, is far from winning approval for the project.
In fact, the complex has not yet reached its first hurdle. That will come Tuesday night when an informal compatibility meeting is scheduled with nearby residents and Bedford County planners to review the project.
People in the Blumont Estates neighborhood off Virginia 621 may come out in large numbers to oppose the plan - or at least one part of it.
Adler and his Little League group are proposing to extend what is now a quiet, dead-end road in the neighborhood and make it the main entrance to the baseball complex.
That would dramatically increase traffic on the road. Plans include seven or eight ball fields and parking for 250 cars. The 30-acre site is off U.S. 221 just behind Lane Pontiac.
"We don't want to be on a main thoroughfare," said Mark Patterson, who moved his family to the neighborhood seven years ago because of its peacefulness. Many of his neighbors agree.
"It would just destroy this whole quiet community," said Grace Simon, who has lived in the neighborhood with her husband for two years.
A petition opposing the plan is being circulated.
Simon, Patterson and others actually do not oppose the complex itself. They only oppose opening the road through their neighborhood as its entrance.
If another entrance could be developed, they said, they wouldn't stand in the way. Many agreed with Adler. Said Simon: "We're pleased it's not an industrial development."
Or a prison. A year ago, this same group of neighbors and other Forest homeowners fought to block a women's prison proposed for a site just beyond the land where the baseball complex would be built. The prison eventually went elsewhere.
Developing a different entrance could prove difficult, however, Adler said. The road through Blumont Estates already is a state-maintained road, and Adler said it would be simple to extend.
Two other possible entrances would be more difficult to develop. He said one would provide an entrance directly off U.S. 221, but it would have to cross railroad tracks that run along U.S. 221.
Adler said it would be costly to build a bridge over the tracks and not practical to have a crossing there. And he said getting approval from Norfolk Southern for either could be equally troublesome.
The other option would be to develop a gravel road that now runs to the back of the site as the main entrance. Again, Adler cited cost and getting approval for the road.
Also, it is not a state-maintained road, and he said getting the state to take the road into its system could pose problems.
Still, Adler isn't too worried.
"As logic goes, I can't see a better use for a piece of land," he said. "Ask people anywhere what they would prefer to see built next to their homes and - universally - I think they would say a park."
Adler also is pitching the project as something that would benefit Forest residents. The complex would be exclusively for the Lynchburg Little League, but Adler said many Forest youths participate in the league, which includes about 1,200 kids.
He also said when the Lynchburg league isn't using the complex, it would be open to Bedford County teams. He said he would like to have a joint Lynchburg-Bedford County league in the fall.
Adler, an architect with children in Little League, estimates the total cost of the complex at $1 million, but he believes more than half of that could be saved through builders and others donating materials and services. Adler himself will not receive any pay for the project.
He said that if the project is approved, he hopes to begin work on the complex next year and play ball in the spring of 1995.
After Tuesday's compatibility meeting, the project will go before the Bedford County Board of Zoning Appeals or the Planning Commission, and possibly the Board of Supervisors for additional hearings.
by CNB