Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 31, 1993 TAG: 9303310092
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The original road - abandoned years ago when highway crews blasted a straight path down Catawba Mountain - could be pressed back into service.
The Virginia Department of Transportation may use the old roadbed to train maintenance workers to drive graders, dump trucks and other types of heavy equipment.
The proposed training school has divided the community between those who see no harm in it and others who believe it could shatter the valley's tranquility.
The Transportation Department would lease 15 to 20 acres from Virginia Tech, which owns a research farm at the foot of Catawba Mountain. Highway workers in groups of 10 to 15 would come from across Western Virginia for weekly training sessions.
Jeff Echols, the Transportation Department's resident engineer, said the sessions would include classroom instruction at the nearby Catawba Community Center and field work on the old Virginia 311 roadbed.
Echols said construction would be limited to a storage building and a parking area for heavy equipment. There also would be a gravel stockpile.
"There would not be massive grading of the countryside," he said.
The proposed training school has drawn some opposition, but not the universal uprising that happened a few years ago when Catawba was mentioned as a possible site for a prison work camp.
A majority of people who attended a Ruritan Club meeting last week said they were in favor of the training school.
Harold Wingate, who owns the Homeplace Restaurant, said he had no reason to be concerned about a dozen highway workers training on the old roadbed.
"It's not anything that's going to mess up the valley," Wingate said.
But some residents fear that the training school could grow into a much larger complex that would involve acres of asphalt and heavy machinery scarring the pastoral landscape.
"This thing is so open-ended that it could grow into something huge," said Eric Trethewey, a Hollins College professor who moved to Catawba eight years ago.
Trethewey and others began collecting signatures Friday in hopes of preventing the Department of Transportation from setting up the training center.
It was unclear, however, how residents could block the plan if Virginia Tech leases part of its farm to the Transportation Department.
The Roanoke County Board of Supervisors could not stop the training school because state agencies such as Tech and the Transportation Department are exempt from local zoning regulations, according to county Planning Director Terry Harrington.
Echols said county officials say the training school would be a small boost to restaurants and hotels that would feed and house the transportation workers.
"I would equate it to a large conference, only spread out over a period of time," said Joyce Waugh, a county economic development specialist.
County Supervisor Ed Kohinke, who represents the Catawba area, said he was trying to stay neutral on the proposal.
But Kohinke said he would "tend to support" the plan because it would generate motel and meals taxes for the county in general and benefit his constituents in particular.
"I figure that maybe their roads will improve if that thing is over there," Kohinke said.
Echols said training crews could spend time clearing ditches, patching potholes and mowing grass on local roads.
He said planning for the training school was in a "preliminary" stage and that the Transportation Department may consider other sites around the Roanoke and New River valleys.
Still, Echols said, the Transportation Department would like to get the school up and running by the summer or fall.
by CNB