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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 13, 1994                   TAG: 9404130098
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: By STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FLOYD                                LENGTH: Medium

WAY IS CLEARED FOR CONSTRUCTION OF GROUP HOME

VMH Inc. of Christiansburg wants to build the home, which would house 16 boys and girls, in the Possum Hollow section of the county along Virginia 615.

After months of debate with local activists who opposed the project, the plan hit a roadblock in February when the Virginia Department of Transportation denied VMH a driveway entrance permit. A speed study showed there wasn't enough sight distance between the entrance and a curve up the road.

But after hiring a consultant who looked at alternatives, VMH, formerly Virginia Mountain Housing, decided to move the entrance farther down the road to the extreme corner of the property, said Stephen Duncan, director of operations for VMH.

"This time the speed study supported the granting of the permit," said Bob Beasley, assistant resident engineer with the Transportation Department's Hillsville office. "This is a very cut-and-dry type of issue."

"We're ready to start pushing dirt next week," Duncan said. "I'm real excited to get started." He estimated construction of the home could be completed by October or November.

The home should be ready to begin operations about that time, too, said Susan Duncan, director of Tekoa Inc., the corporation VMH formed to run the home.

"I guess I had faith all along that it would go through," she said Tuesday. The facility will self-contained, with a school and library on-site, two wings separating up to eight boys and eight girls and a generator which could supply power for up to a week.

Susan Duncan says the home is needed to supply care to abused, neglected, truant and otherwise troubled youths who can be treated in an environment close to home where their families can be a part of the treatment.

"That is what is so important to the care" - the family aspect. she said.

Currently there is no group home in the New River Valley. Tekoa, which already conducts some home-based services, will serve the valley and the counties of Carroll, Grayson and Wythe.

Last year, Duncan said, 32 children in those localities who could have been treated at the planned home had to be taken to sites outside the community, an action that costs the community more and makes readjustment to normal life more difficult.

Several dozen Floyd County residents have complained that the facility would be too isolated for the children's safety. They worried about the nature of the children themselves and criticized what they thought was an overly secretive process of establishing the home.

Linda DeVito, one of the opponents' organizers, said Tuesday that the matter wasn't decided yet.

VMH had first tried to build the home in Giles County, but was twharted when the county's Board of Supervisors refused to rezone the land for the organization. Floyd County, however, has no zoning laws that could have served to block the home's building.

Dozens of residents turned out at meetings last autumn to try to dissuade the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development from granting VMH a $350,000 loan to build the home. The department granted the loan in November.

"It's definitely going to be built," Stephen Duncan said. "I have all the permits I need."