Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 5, 1994 TAG: 9412010027
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KENNETH SINGLETARY STAFF WRITE|
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Still to come is final approval of the site plan for the 200,000-square-foot shopping center, but a hitch may have surfaced Tuesday.
The owner of a nearby bowling alley told council he wants the shopping center's parking lot to be easily navigable to through traffic, a move that would give his customers better access to his bowling lanes.
Council's vote did not deal with that question.
"The site plan has not been approved, so there is time for changes," said Ray Alcorn, the owner of Triangle Lanes.
The current site plan shows a circuitous route through the parking lot for traffic traveling between U.S. 460 and Marshall Drive, a road that will enter the shopping center's parking lot after coming down a 12-percent grade.
At the bottom of that grade, the site plan shows a traffic island. Alcorn wondered if vehicles will be able to negotiate the road and hill in icy weather.
But Wal-Mart engineers objected to changes to their plan, saying a through street in the parking lot would be unsafe.
"To let a through street into the parking lot is not the situation we want to put Wal-Mart into," said Tim Sorey, an consulting engineer on the project. "This is a retail street, and that's what it should be used for."
Council's action Tuesday gives the developers a ``clean piece of property and a clean title,'' said Sorey, who works for CEI Engineering Associates, the Bentonville, Ark., firm that drew the site plan.
He said bids for construction could go out this month, and construction could begin in November. He said Wal-Mart would like to open the store, located on Peppers Ferry Road across from the 450,000-square-foot New River Valley Mall, next summer.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***