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

DATE: TUESDAY, September 19, 1995                   TAG: 9509200022
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NO DEAL

No, it's not the Brooklyn Bridge. And he doesn't want to sell it.

This bridge, he wants to buy. Plus the road that goes under and over it.

For which he's offering to pay the owners, Roanoke city taxpayers, exactly . . . nothing.

Do we need a reality check?

The Roanoke businessman, owner of the fabulous Rockledge mansion on Mill Mountain, would like the city to give him Prospect Road, the old access way up the mountain.

In return, Smith would assume responsibility and maintenance costs, including a $50,000 stabilization job on the interesting, curving but dilapidated "over-and-under" bridge, which has been closed for safety reasons for years.

If that isn't feasible, says Smith, he'd like the city to keep the road and fix the bridge at taxpayers' expense. In return, he'd ask only for permission to build a gate, closing Prospect to auto traffic except for his guests.

Having circulated these proposals for most of this year, Smith is reportedly impatient to hear back from the city. Roanoke officials and the advisory group, Mill Mountain Development Committee, are putting off recommendations until they've given the matter more study.

But on one issue, they shouldn't need to keep Smith hanging. They ought to be able to clear up any uncertainty right away.

The road must remains the city's.

The problem with Smith's offer is not that taxpayers would get nothing from it. He wouldn't pay to buy the bridge and road, but he would be picking up costs that taxpayers otherwise would have to bear.

Nor is there a problem with Smith's understandable desire to address two concerns, the unsafe bridge and the undesirables who ride up the road late at night, leaving trails of beer cans.

The problem is the notion that the city might give even the slightest consideration to handing over Prospect Road.

In the first place, the Fishburn family didn't contribute Mill Mountain to the people of Roanoke for this road to become private property.

In the second place, city officials should have been looking years ago for ways to make use of the scenic road and to link it, perhaps for bikers and walkers only, to Wiley Drive and nearby recreation areas. To give it away now would be unthinkable.

As Don Robertson on today's letters page points out, Prospect Road is a "unique piece of Roanoke's history." As interest in greenways and trails grows in the valley, also budding is recognition that existing scenic and park resources need to be better connected.

What to do with a beautiful public road curling up a forested mountain in the middle of a city? We can imagine several options. Converting it into someone's driveway isn't one of them.