Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 26, 1995 TAG: 9510260043
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Jeanette Manns is home recovering from surgery, but from her bed, she still managed to organize tonight's meeting in the hope it will give Northwest Roanoke the political clout it's never had.
She was livid when she read a newspaper story this week about City Council selling $5 million in bonds to build the Wal-Mart interchange.
"I think this is just another city game to take more poor people's property to benefit one industry," she said. "It's not places for people to live; it's not rehabilitation of older houses. Private industry is not supposed to run Roanoke. It's supposed to be for citizens."
And she's still hot about an earlier story in which Mayor David Bowers said Roanoke doesn't have a problem with diversity. "He doesn't recognize that Roanoke has a race problem," she sniffed, "and if he doesn't, he's blind."
She's been trying to get a traffic light near her 10th Street Northwest home ever since her two grandsons were hit by a speeding car last year. She didn't get one, and said she never heard any more from Bowers. "He's not a mayor to all the people in Roanoke," she said. "He's a mayor to some of the people."
Manns, the Rev. Clinton Scott and other Northwest Roanokers are forming the Washington Park Alliance for Residents tonight for people living in the 10th Street corridor between Orange Avenue and Interstate 581. The meeting will be at 7 in the community room at the Lincoln Terrace public housing complex.
On their agenda are improved police protection, street maintenance and city services in Northwest, as well as plans to widen 10th Street.
The Virginia Department of Transportation long has planned to widen the street to four lanes from Gilmer Avenue to 10th Street's northern end at Williamson Road - a distance of 1.7 miles.
However, most of the widening could be from two lanes to three instead of four, which would mean fewer homes lost. Roanoke Public Works Director Bill Clark said Wednesday that the city asked VDOT a few months ago if it would scale back some of the widening to three lanes "to minimize the impact on the adjoining residential property."
The stretch from Gilmer to Orange Avenue would need to be four lanes to make traffic flow from the four lanes south of that intersection. Clark is hoping VDOT will agree to three lanes, with a middle turn lane north of Orange - something he said VDOT usually doesn't think is worth its investment.
VDOT's plans call for public hearings by next June and construction beginning as early as mid-1998 on the first phase, the eight-tenths of a mile between Gilmer Avenue and Andrews Road. Estimated cost for engineering, right-of-way acquisition and construction was put at $8.6 million.
The second phase, covering the nine-tenths of a mile between Andrews and Williamson roads, would go under construction in the year 2000 and cost almost $7.2 million. But city traffic engineer Bob Bengtson said all those plans and timetables could change.
He and Clark said they have no plans to connect 10th Street with the proposed I-581 interchange at Wal-Mart - something residents like Manns suspect will happen.
Lawrence Hamlar, president of Hamlar & Curtis Funeral Home Inc. at 10th Street and Moorman Road, said city officials told him years ago that the widening would be on the opposite side of 10th Street from his business. He's counting on it. He's been there since 1952. "If they took that," he said, "it would ruin me."
Manns said all the road plans in a mostly black neighborhood remind her of the hundreds of homes and businesses lost in Gainsboro and old Northeast Roanoke during decades of federally financed urban renewal. "This is the way they destroy inner cities," she said. "Then you wind up being a renter and not a homeowner."
For more information on the meeting or the Washington Park Alliance for Residents, call Jeanette Manns at 265-0758.
by CNB