ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 3, 1996 TAG: 9604030041
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
Curious neighbors gathered at a windy cornfield Tuesday to hear a U.S. senator, Roanoke's mayor and its city manager lay out their vision of a new Interstate 581 exit near Valley View Mall.
Unlike the Iowa farmer in the movie "Field of Dreams" who turned his cornfield into a ballpark after a voice assured him, "If you build it, they will come," the message here was: They'll come whether we build it or not.
Shoppers heading to Valley View, the new Wal-Mart Supercenter and nearby stores are crowding Valley View's current interstate access at Hershberger Road at the rate of 56,000 cars a day. That's expected to grow to 77,000 a day by 2000, according to consultants Tom Creasey, with Wilbur Smith Associates, and Brian Wishneff, working for Valley View managers Faison Associates.
And that doesn't include the traffic to and from the Wal-Mart Supercenter, the consultants said.
They estimated that the Valley View area - including Crossroads Mall, the regional airport and the Towne Square retail complex - generated $438 million in retail sales last year, with an economic ripple of more than $880 million. Mayor David Bowers said the spinoff should grow to $1billion by 2000.
But there's a cost in safety: Police reported 149 accidents on Hershberger Road near Valley View last year, Bowers said.
The word "Wal-Mart" was rarely mentioned in a day of interchange discussion.
But it was on the minds of residents at three events where the interchange was touted - the cornfield news conference where U.S. Sen. Charles Robb applauded the idea, a state Commonwealth Transportation Board meeting in Salem where U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, did the same, and a public hearing at Huff Lane Micro Village School near Valley View.
"It seems to me they shouldn't have let Wal-Mart be built there," Evelyn Bethel, leader of the Historic Gainsboro neighborhood organization, said of the traffic increases. The store opened this winter just south of Valley View. The interchange would be built south of Wal-Mart at Valley View Boulevard.
Others said Valley View needed traffic relief even before Wal-Mart.
After viewing maps of the proposed exit, Barbara Duerk, a member of the Roanoke Planning Commission, concluded, "I think it's been driven by economic development, which drives all road projects here. I just think the traffic in Northwest [Roanoke] needs to be addressed as a whole instead of serving just Valley View."
More immediate concerns were voiced about the customers of the 200 businesses in and around Valley View. "I think by next Christmas we're going to see exactly how big this problem is," Goodlatte said.
None of the officials promoting the interchange or the planners and consultants closest to the project could say how much it would cost or how long it would take to build. They said it was too early in the planning for the exit, but it will be years before there's a new interchange.
The city has issued a $5 million bond for preliminary engineering, right-of-way acquisition and Phase I construction, but the more elaborate Phase II might cost six times as much.
Because the exit would lie along an interstate, it must be approved by the Commonwealth Transportation Board and the Federal Highway Administration and it must be added to the Virginia Department of Transportation's six-year plan.
The city has created financial slack in its 20-year transportation plan for the exit by deleting a $33.5 million plan to widen to eight lanes of I-581 between Elm Street and Orange Avenue.
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: map - Proposed I-581/Valley View Boulevardby CNBinterchange. STAFF