Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507240003
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RALEIGH, N.C. LENGTH: Long
The mallards lean over and dunk their heads into Lake Lynn, rooting around the muddy shallows as their upturned tails wiggle awkwardly above the surface.
A few hundred yards away, turtles the size of soup bowls sun on tiny mud islands. A school of sunfish is motionless in the water, as if waiting to be fed.
The quiet, mile-long lake is ringed by trees, shady asphalt paths and sun-drenched wooden walkways that cross shoreline grasses and mud flats.
It's hard to believe this bucolic setting is within a city - especially a burgeoning one like North Carolina's capital, where new construction is as common as toadstools after a wet spell.
Lake Lynn Park has been open only a few months. It's one of a number of "greenways" spread across Raleigh.
"I usually spend at least an hour out here," said Katherine Newill, a cardiac surgery nurse on a brisk walk with her 12-year-old daughter, Laura, this month. "It's a nice way to start your day. People need to learn to stop and enjoy what they have."
In Raleigh, there is plenty to enjoy. The city is a leader among Southeastern U.S. municipalities in the development of linear parks - narrow corridors that meander through the city.
The concept is one that a handful of die-hard greenways advocates are hoping to sell to residents and local leaders in the Roanoke Valley.
"It's a terrific system. It's the granddaddy of greenways," said Lucy Ellett, chairwoman of the Roanoke Valley Greenways/Open Space Steering Committee. The panel, an outgrowth of the Fifth Planning District Commission, formed this year after community, business, conservation and recreation activists banded together to support greenways.
The committee visited Raleigh and three other cities - Durham, N.C., and Kingsport and Knoxville, Tenn. - as part of its greenways planning effort here.
It has also hired a consultant, Greenway Inc., to develop a conceptual plan. The Cary, N.C., company, which has charted and helped implement greenways programs across the country, is headed by Charles A. Flink, a former Raleigh parks and recreation director.
Meanwhile, the New Century Council this month called for an elaborate network of bicycle and walking paths throughout the region.
The first of three public workshops on greenways takes place Monday at the Roanoke Civic Center Exhibit Hall at 6:30 p.m. Flink will seek ideas from the community on possible greenway corridors and present a preliminary report.
Raleigh's system "is probably a little beyond the scope of what we're talking about doing now," Ellett said.
But everybody has to start somewhere, she added. Raleigh, for instance, began its greenways program 20 years ago with a trail that was only a few hundred yards long.
Today, it has about 36 miles of 10-foot-wide paved asphalt trails, most of them near bodies of water or along sewer rights of way.
Another 11 miles or so of protected corridors carry unpaved trails. They range from broad dirt swaths covered by fallen pine needles to narrow footpaths criss-crossed by tree roots and blackberry brambles.
The city's ambitious conceptual plan, first adopted in the mid-1970s and amended since then, calls for 270 miles of protected corridors covering 4,000 acres. It looks something like a volleyball net laid atop a Raleigh city map.
The city is adding five to eight miles of greenway corridors each year, said Vic Lebsock, recreation and parks director.
For now, the greenways are purposefully sprinkled in different sections of the rapidly growing city. Later on, they will be linked.
Building portions in different parts of town allows close access for more citizens, Lebsock said. That builds greenways' popularity over a broad population base, which helps keep the pressure on politicians to provide funding for them.
And they're better used compared to traditional parks created out of large tracts of land.
"The greenway trail is our single highest-used recreation program," Lebsock said.
A walk in the park
You'd think on a stifling hot weekday of 90 degrees in the shade, Raleigh's citizens would opt for air-conditioned comfort over the outdoors.
But if a July 12 jaunt past Shelley Lake, Lake Lynn or Lake Johnson Nature Park is any indication, you'd be dead wrong.
Early morning to sundown at Raleigh's three most popular greenways brought a steady stream of users - runners, walkers, mothers pushing baby strollers, cyclists, in-line skaters, people fishing and just plain loafing.
They were young and old, fat and thin, male and female, healthy and frail, and of every possible race or color.
One of the draws is the shade, which keeps the greenway cooler. Another is the peace and quiet and glimpses of wildlife. And parents don't have to worry about children darting into the street.
Narrow and long, greenways usually wind in and out of neighborhoods. That puts them within walking distance of more people than traditional parks.
"I've used it a lot with the children," said Liese McRae, strolling past sunbeams breaking through the shadows. Her 6-year old son, Adam, and his 4-year-old sister, Anna, were mounted none none too steadily on bicycles, plodding along the Shelley Lake trail.
"They love the ducks and the playground. It's a safe place for them to ride bikes," McRae said.
A ways down the trail, Crockett Scott shuffled slowly. The 66-year-old retired plywood factory worker is here for his health. He's been making greenways a habit for three years.
"Doc told me to use it," Scott said. "See, I have heart problems. It's more relaxing here. It's shady and you got wildlife. Plus, I've got plenty of room. In the city you have cement streets, too many people."
John DiPietro is sitting on a bench along the Shelley Lake trail, watching his 3-year-old son, Michael, zip a radio-controlled dune buggy up and down the path. Michael has also brought a bucket, shovel and sieve to the park.
The DiPietros moved to Raleigh from New York City on July 5, and haven't quite caught on to the greenway concept.
"I don't see any play areas for children," DiPietro said. "Back in New York, they'd have sandboxes, slides, swings - that sort of thing."
Charles Quesenberry, a middle-aged North Carolina State University statistics professor, strolls along the Lead Mine Creek/Shelley Lake trail regularly with his wife, Odell.
"This is very popular. On weekends and holidays this will be jammed with casual strollers," Quesenberry said during a break in his morning walk around Shelley Lake. "There'll be softball games, kids flying kites."
He said it's doubtful they'd be out walking elsewhere if they didn't have the greenway.
"The sidewalks, the surfaces are very poor," Quesenberry said. "Concrete is hard on the knees. And traffic is terrible. But asphalt absorbs shock," he added, gesturing at the paved trail.
Newill, during her walk along Lake Lynn later in the day, voices a similar sentiment.
"The carbon monoxide from cars - what's the benefit?" she asked. "I think this is one of the best ideas they've ever come up with."
On a large walkway on the other side of the lake, Som Sak is reeling in a foot-long catfish he'll eat for dinner that night. The 20-year-old martial arts instructor-in-training said he comes out with his fishing gear almost every day.
"The best thing about it - I live right across the street," said Sam Selim, a college student who is jogging before class. "All I gotta do is walk right across the street, and I feel like I'm in the mountains or something.
"I come out in the morning, and there's mist over the lake, and the geese come flying in and skidding to a stop on the water. Wow!" Selim said.
"Why am I here?" asked Lisa Ottensen, out for an evening jog at Lake Johnson. "It's cheaper than joining a gym."
Victims of success?
Greenways aren't all milk and honey. Some people shun certain Raleigh greenways that have become too popular, too packed with people. In that sense, linear parks may become victims of their own success.
Toward evening, Raleigh greenways can get crowded. Lake Johnson, which already has two sizable parking lots near its shoreline, has a roadside testament to its drawing power: an "Additional Greenway Parking" sign a half-mile before you get there.
"We used to go over to Shelley Lake, but that one's gotten so crowded," Sara Pupilli said during an evening walk around Lake Johnson with her son Kris, 7, her sister, Anne Doman, and Doman's newborn baby.
In fact, many weekday greenway users steer clear of the linear parks on Saturdays and Sundays.
"I don't even come here on the weekends. There's too many people," said Jay Eaker, a cyclist who often does 10 to 15 circuits of the 2-mile loop around Shelley Lake.
"Weekends, it's jammed," Newill says of Lake Lynn. "You see the same faces out here, over and over."
``People have cussed me out because `the damn trail is too damn popular,''' parks director Lebsock said.
There also is crime on greenways. The most serious are sexual assaults on women. More frequent is indecent exposure.
Lebsock argues that the overall crime rate on greenways is lower than for the city as a whole, and that sex crimes occur no more frequently in linear parks than elsewhere in Raleigh.
But almost invariably, offenses in greenways draw more attention, Lebsock acknowledged, giving rise to a perception of danger. Raleigh has park rangers that patrol some of the greenways.
There is also competition for space.
Talk to enough strollers and cyclists and you get a sense that they barely tolerate each other. A simmering feud between the two groups has been played out in letters to the editor of Raleigh's daily newspaper, the News & Observer.
The bikers blame walkers for getting in their way, especially those who walk three or four abreast on the narrow ribbon of asphalt.
Some pedestrians act like traffic cops, calling out warnings to cyclists to keep it under 10 mph, the posted limit, Eaker said.
Walkers, on the other hand, frequently are startled by bikes whizzing by them without warning.
"They're going 30 mph. They come up behind you, you can't even hear them," Quesenberry said.
Odell Quesenberry, his wife, said she has some advice for Roanoke if it proceeds with greenways: Build two trails; one for cyclists, another for everybody else.
Other complaining letters have concerned walkers allowing their pets to defecate on or near the trails, or allowing them to run off leashes, Eaker said.
How Raleigh did it
Raleigh started its greenway projects where they've been easiest: on land it already owns. Lake Johnson is a backup reservoir for the city.
Shelley Lake and Lake Lynn were built as stormwater-control projects after floods ravaged parts of Raleigh and its surrounding suburbs in the early 1970s.
Fed by small streams, they are giant repositories for storm water caused by severe rains. Both lakes were annexed into the city after greenways efforts began.
Bill Flournoy, a Raleigh native and graduate student at North Carolina State University, got the greenways ball rolling with a master's thesis he wrote in the mid-1970s that advocated establishing 100- to 300-foot-wide protected corridors along low-lying streams in the 100-year flood plain.
Besides flood control zones that would allow excess water to seep into the ground slowly, the greenways could be buffers between residential and commercial development, protect trees, be a linear park system, and be travel corridors for birds, squirrels and other wildlife, Flournoy figured.
Then an intern with the city, Flournoy sold his idea to a few people who privately built a small prototype greenway in a wealthy section of Raleigh. Its influential residents liked the prototype so much that they became some of the city's loudest advocates for greenways, Lebsock said.
All of the paths that eventually will connect Raleigh's greenways will be built in the flood plain, where land is comparatively cheap. Lebsock said buying greenway rights of way costs Raleigh taxpayers 2 to 10 cents a square foot, or $880 to $4,400 per acre.
At least in concept, some of Roanoke's flood control plans contain elements that are similar to Raleigh's.
The city intends to construct a flood control lake in Roanoke County to alleviate stormwater problems along some sections of Peters Creek. Roanoke City Manager Bob Herbert said talks are about to begin with Roanoke County over where a flood control lake could go and its dimensions.
Although construction is at least two years away, a 3.5-mile hiker-biker path is planned along the Roanoke River following Wiley Drive through Wasena and Smith parks.
Herbert has also suggested establishing greenways along some of the parts of Garden City hit hardest in recent flooding, if federal funding for land purchases becomes available.
by CNB