Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 25, 1995 TAG: 9505250060
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
This is a salvage operation. Everything is coming out of the once-tidy apartment house. New wires, switches, a furnace, cabinets and the kitchen sink. Even some things that are nailed down, such as the carved fireplace mantel, a wooden staircase and concrete pillars on the front porch.
The building's former owner refurbished the property not long ago. But soon, it and many other old homes and buildings in Historic Gainsboro will be torn down for a "new" Gainsboro Road.
Bids are to go out next month on the Second Street-Gainsboro Road project, a four-lane road linking Orange Avenue with downtown, which has generated controversy for years. Construction probably will begin in the fall, said Bill Clark, city public works director.
Including a bridge across Norfolk Southern Corp. tracks, to replace the Second Street grade-level crossing, the new road is projected to cost $14.5 million, counting design and land acquisition. The Virginia Department of Transportation is paying almost all of it.
The new artery, scheduled for completion by the end of 1997, is the second major road project through the Historic Gainsboro neighborhood in the past few years. Wells Avenue, the new entrance to the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center, was the first.
The once-thriving community is quiet now; many of the homes that remain are run-down. Some residents fear the new "four-lane highway," as they call it, will bring far too much traffic into the aging black neighborhood and change its character forever.
Studying a map of the new street alignment, Nichols agreed.
"I used to think this place would be the next Old Southwest," he said. "You know, people would buy these old homes and fix them up. They could walk to work downtown.
"But when they get through," he said, "you're not going to recognize this place. It's a case of progress over people."
To Helen Davis and Evelyn Bethel, two sisters who live on Patton Avenue near St.Andrews Catholic Church, the plans are frightening.
They fear the neighborhood will be inundated with traffic going to and from downtown - and that the increased access will spawn more building projects like the recently reopened Hotel Roanoke.
"With Fifth Street and 10th Street and now Gainsboro, they'll have four-lane highways about every three blocks," said Bethel, president of the Historic Gainsboro Preservation District.
"This is a small, quiet, quaint area down here," Davis said. "That's what made it so special. It's too small of an area to [absorb] all these buildings and traffic and trucks."
All told, the road project will claim pieces of almost 90 properties along its 3/4-mile route.
Some are mere slivers of land; others are entire parcels. Stretches of some existing streets - such as First Street and the existing Gainsboro Road - will disappear in the realignment.
Cul-de-sacs will be built, closing Patton Avenue and existing Gainsboro Road. And 14 vacant houses and commercial buildings that lie in the project's path will be demolished.
Probably the greatest change will occur at Gilmer Avenue and First Street, where seven structures will fall to the wrecking ball. Two more are going down on Patton Avenue and another two on Wells Avenue. The city has agreed to move another house on Wells that is in the road's way.
The project also will take a three-story warehouse just north of the railroad tracks near Second Street, and the Whitescarver building, which sits at Second Street and Norfolk Avenue, just south of the tracks.
A new crossing north of downtown has been planned since the late 1980s. City Council approved the Second Street-Gainsboro Road design and location almost five years ago.
Clark said it's the final leg of a long-planned, four-sided "downtown loop." The other parts are Wells Avenue, Williamson Road and Franklin Road.
Once complete, "people will be able to get in this four-sided road pattern and get around downtown without cutting through the middle of it," he said.
The public works chief said he doubts that the magnitude of traffic Davis and Bethel fear will ever materialize.
"If you look over at Gainsboro Road between 7 and 9 a.m., and look at the volume of traffic, there's already a lot," he said.
While he expects that the new alignment and bridge over the tracks will make the route more attractive to motorists, "how much more it will be, I don't have a number for you."
Other longtime residents shrug at the coming changes.
"You can't stand in the way of progress," said Harold Holmes, who lives on Gilmer west of the buildings that will be torn down. "It's a done deal, anyway."
by CNB