Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, November 10, 1995 TAG: 9511100050
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ELISSA MILENKY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
"If I had to go outside, I don't think I'd trust it," Sifford joked as she stood among the maps and computer-generated photos of the proposed Alternative 3A project Wednesday evening.
Sifford was among 169 people who attended a public hearing at the Blacksburg Holiday Inn to view design plans of the U.S. 460 bypass and extension project. Like Sifford, many of the people who attended the hearing were property owners affected by the project.
In total, 149 residences, 32 businesses and one nonprofit organization will be displaced if design plans are approved by the Commonwealth Transportation Board, which will address the $135.3 million road improvement project in early 1996. Several property owners who attended the hearing said they are not thrilled about moving but believe the road project is necessary.
"We really need the road," said Sifford, whose trailer is across from Corning Inc. on U.S. 460 in Christiansburg. "I got stuck in that football traffic last week."
If the board approves the plans, the transportation department would begin in mid-1996 buying land needed to complete the project. The Virginia Department of Transportation could begin property appraisals sometime in January, said Jack Orr, the department's right-of-way manager in Salem.
Generally, the first people to receive offers for their property from the transportation department are residences and businesses that must be displaced. People who own undeveloped land usually are the last to be approached, Orr said. After an offer is accepted, the property owner has 90 days to move out, although that time is negotiable.
"A lot of people that know their property is being taken are thinking a lot about what they can do, what they can't do," Orr said.
"We're dealing with intelligent, sophisticated people that know what's going on," he added.
Six people from Orr's department attended the hearing to answer public questions, two more representatives than were at the Alternative 3A informational meeting that was held two weeks before. At that meeting, Orr said, "we almost got overwhelmed by people with property acquisition questions."
John and Mary Madis, who own 22 acres of partly developed land with a group of investors, found out their property was needed for the road project just months after they bought it. They are just looking at other possibilities for now.
"They need to do something," about the traffic.
Alternative 3A is a two-pronged project: a 4.42-mile four-lane road that would connect the Christiansburg and Blacksburg bypasses and a 1.05-mile extension of the Christiansburg Bypass that would connect it to I-81 near Falling Branch Road.
The project, which is supposed to ease traffic, includes five interchanges, the most complicated of which is in Blacksburg. That interchange, represented at the hearing by a complicated sketch of swooping lines, would connect Business 460, the 460 Bypass and the proposed "smart" highway.
If all goes as planned, construction bids on the project could be advertised by 1999.
"That's said that it won't be built in my lifetime," said Sifford's brother, Delmon Jarrell.
by CNB