Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 23, 1994                   TAG: 9402230147
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

I-73 FOES ASK BLACKSBURG TO RETHINK ITS ENDORSEMENT

They asked questions and demanded that council help them learn more about the road. Council members later said they, too, need to learn more.

Many of the Blacksburg-area residents voiced displeasure over a proposed route that shows the highway passing north of Blacksburg and through the Catawba Valley in Montgomery County.

"You've got a tiger by the tail on this one," said Dan Fleming, a Blacksburg resident. "I ask you: Don't sleep on your watch."

"Please do not let apparent progress destroy our long-term future," pleaded Margaret Roston Hagedorn.

The crowd initially was led by David Violette, a county resident who said the council has received little or no input from the community on how residents feel about I-73.

"I find that inexcusable and irresponsible," said Violette, who then was cheered by the crowd.

He was referring, at least in part, to the council's passage of a resolution last month supporting an I-73 corridor through the county. Violette called on the council to reconsider its position and hold "at least two or three public hearings."

After the public comment session, Mayor Roger Hedgepeth addressed the crowd.

"The council does not have one shred of information" more than the people have, he said.

But he defended council's passage of the resolution, referring to a paragraph that asks the Virginia Department of Transportation "to give local governments the opportunity to play an active role in the consideration, planning and development of the I-73 corridor."

The department's planning staff is to recommend an I-73 route to the Commonwealth Transportation Board in three weeks. There are seven proposed routes through Virginia for the Detroit-to-Charleston, S.C., highway.

Council Vice Chairman Michael Chandler seemed to echo the crowd's concerns, saying, "I don't know that I-73 serves us as a community.

"VDOT is hurrying to catch up with West Virginia and North Carolina," he said. "Do we even want it?"

Council members agreed that they need to schedule a work session on the topic.

But Hedgepeth said public hearings would be premature.

"I-73 is an enigma. You can't have public hearings on an enigma," he said.

"I think that when all is said and done, Blacksburg Town Council is going to be a very small cog in all this machinery," that might bring the interstate into being, Hedgepeth said.

Many in the crowd attended a community meeting the night before in Slussers Chapel Church, and plan to take their cause to the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors on Monday.

Before the I-73 discussion, several Blacksburg business people urged the town to try to bring the Family Motor Coach Association convention back in 1997.

The 1993 convention, held in August, brought more than $10 million into the local economy.

Because the convention rotates its location among time zones every year, the earliest it could return to the East Coast is 1997.

Beth Ifju, director of sales and marketing for the Blacksburg Marriott, said the hotel did better business during the convention than it had in any previous summer week.

"We're definitely in favor of having that again," Ifju said.