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

DATE: SUNDAY, May 14, 1995                   TAG: 9505190006
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: B2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KERMIT W. SALYER JR.
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HIGHWAY EXUBERANCE IN THE EXURB

I MUST agree with Susie Fetter (May 3 commentary, ``Malled in America: the decline of civilized trade'') that the mall culture must bear its share of the responsibility for the decline of our nation, at least as much as, say, ignoring the pope.

Also to blame is the fact that no more efficient or effective system of propaganda has ever been invented than the American advertising industry. (Perhaps to change the world all we need do is send to places like Rwanda a few of our overflow of ad executives.)

But I must differ with Fetter on one point: We will not have to worry about her hypothesized Boones Mill Wal-Mart contributing to the certain, eventual demise of Valley View Mall because, as any student of the history of roads and The Way Things Are can tell you, Boones Mill won't be there. At least not the one we know.

Boones Mill - or Roanoke or virtually any other agglomeration of citizens with a history longer than that of the automobile - was built where it was for a reason.

We may jokingly refer to it as a wide spot in the road (or a political circus) while forgetting it is there precisely because it is such a spot.

In finding its way out of the Roanoke Valley toward the south, U.S. 220 essentially followed the Carolina Road, a trail used by pioneers and the Indians before them, first blazed by wildlife migrating along the path of least resistance.

An alternative, the Virginia 613 corridor running south from Starkey, then along the bottom land of Maggodee Creek, comes up against the same obstacle:

The easiest, cheapest, most reasonable way to get past the choke-point at the base of Cahas Mountain is right through Boones Mill.

If the town is to take advantage of the new highway, it will need an interchange, which will require between 60 and 100 acres to fully service it (on and off in both directions). One hundred acres would just about encompass every building in the main business district visible from U.S. 220.

So, we move the cloverleaf with its extra miles of access roads to a spot either north or south of town - and in the process create the nucleus of a new exurb - which has nothing to do with Boones Mill, and which becomes the center of economic activity in the area, leaving the old town adrift. Such civic desertion is still extant in the hulks of another era abandoned alongside old U.S. 11.

Whichever way you take it, the town loses. And this is just along a 2-mile stretch of highway. Now that we have not only I-73 but also the new I-74 compromise in the works (two roads for the price of six?), how often will this scenario be repeated?

A few years after I-73 slices through Franklin County, some asphalt aesthete will notice the route swerves enticingly close to the new city of Lakewood, which might profit from an interstate spur.

And so it goes.

Like ripples in a pond, the flight from the cities will continue as we are goaded to go for the gusto - to acquire more and more trinkets that are worth less and less - while there's still something there for the taking.

Like ripples in a pond? That sounds like an ad.

Like ringworm.

Kermit W. Salyer Jr., of Roanoke, is on the library staff at Virginia Western Community College.

by CNB