ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 13, 1996 TAG: 9608130049
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Strip
THOUGH IRRITATED by construction of the Peters Creek Road extension, Rodney and Juanita Ennis recognize its usefulness.
At ages 81 and 82, Rodney and Juanita Ennis like to sleep late in the mornings.
But in recent months, that has become difficult for them. Outside their stone and frame house in the 4100 block of Shenandoah Avenue in Northwest Roanoke, a valley-changing construction project is under way - the extension of Peters Creek Road from Melrose Avenue south to Brandon Avenue.
Growling when they go forward and beeping when they go back, the trucks and dozers start moving as early as 7 a.m., or 60 to 90 minutes before the Ennises like to rise. The atmosphere, originally almost rural but less and less so in recent decades, has become "a lot of dust and noise," Juanita Ennis said.
Out front, the new lanes of Shenandoah Avenue stand 10 to 12 feet higher than the old pavement did. Additional lanes, closer to the house, soon will be built. Beyond Shenandoah, a smooth new Peters Creek roadbed awaits four lanes of paving, promising to slice time and distance for people traveling from northwest to southwest across the city, and from North Roanoke County to Southwest County and Salem, as well.
The work began about a year ago. Phase one, concluding at Shenandoah, should be wrapped up by January, said Bob Poff, project engineer for the Virginia Department of Transportation, which is administering the job for Roanoke. Phase two, just under way, has a December 1998 completion date.
Though irritated by the construction and concerned about the location of the new driveway VDOT has promised them, the Ennises recognize the usefulness of the road.
"It's going to be a big asset," said Brenda Dearing, who lives with her mother and stepfather, as well as her son, Mark, in the house where she grew up. But she and the Ennises said the effects have been more imposing than they appeared when VDOT officials showed them the plans.
"We didn't know they were going to build it up so high," Juanita Ennis said, nodding toward the road out front and, over to the right, grading for the new entrance to the neighboring Cherry Hill subdivision. They didn't realize that rain would turn the temporary path to the house into a quagmire. Rodney had to reschedule his wife's medical appointment a few days ago because of it.
When finished, the project will extend Peters Creek Road to Brandon at Aerial Way Drive. There it will tie into the widened Brandon and connect with Keagy Road in Salem.
It will shrink the driving distance from Peters Creek and Melrose to Brandon and Aerial Way from 4.7 to 2.3 miles.
The Peters Creek extension will have medians ranging from 3 to 16 feet wide, a 40 to 45 mph speed limit and a sidewalk on its entire east side, as well as some parts of the west.
It also will have five traffic lights - four in the city and one in Salem, as part of the Brandon work - and a $4.6million bridge across the Roanoke River and the Norfolk Southern tracks. It will be the first such crossing in the four-mile stretch from Shaffers Crossing to Virginia 419.
If, as appears likely, Roanoke Electric Steel gets an industrial access road into its property from Peters Creek, another traffic light will go up, making four lights within the space of about a mile, said Bob Bengtson, city traffic engineer.
The new road will alter the neighborhood considerably.
An estimated 14,000 vehicles use Shenandoah each year. Next year, with Peters Creek bisecting it, Shenandoah's total is expected to reach 16,000, Bengtson said.
Using current roads, an estimated 24,000 vehicles traveled from Brandon to Melrose in 1995, said Wayne Ayers, right of way acquisition agent for VDOT. With the extension, that figure is expected to rise to more than 35,000 vehicles per day by 2016.
The price tag for the Peters Creek project is $28million. With the $9.1million Brandon project and the $16million Second Street-Gainsboro Road project also under way, Roanoke's face is changing.
The Ennises just happen to be in the middle of one of those projects.
"That was one of the few places where there were drastic changes" caused by the Peters Creek extension, Ayers said.
The state has compensated the Ennises for the carport and small building they lost. Large forsythia bushes and a flower garden also were removed. Ayers recommended that further compensation be deferred until work is complete.
Juanita Ennis worries that the white dogwood in the side yard might be taken by the road.
She moved into the house with her husband, Curtis Kennett, 49 years ago. Widowed, she married Rodney Ennis 32 years ago. They raised her three children and his two, and the four surviving children have provided them with eight grandchildren. Twenty years ago, the city annexed the area from the county.
"It was like we were living in the country," said Brenda Dearing, who was 11 when her father died. When "Papa" - her stepfather - and his children joined up, they had a lively, six-bedroom home full of kids and their friends.
Even now, family and friends gather regularly at the house. Every second or third weekend, Juanita's son, Dwight Fizer, drives in from his home in Columbus, Ohio, to help out. The yard often looks like a used-car lot, Dearing said.
You'd never know the house had been gutted by fire on a windy, painfully cold afternoon in December 1994.
"We lost everything we had," Rodney said. The interior was completely redone at a cost of more than $80,000, fully covered by insurance.
Bright flowers stand tall in the back yard. Behind that, a large garden bursts with ripening tomatoes, potatoes, corn, squash, beans, peppers and onions.
On the front porch they've stopped using because of the dust and noise, the Ennises said they're not sure they would have rebuilt on the site if they had known what the roadwork would be like.
But VDOT has "done everything they can to make it easy for us," Brenda Dearing said. "After it's all completed and finally done, I think it will be fine."
LENGTH: Long : 114 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN Staff. The scene beyond Rodney and Juanitaby CNBEnnis' front porch is "a lot of dust and noise." The construction of
Peters Creek Road has cost them a carport, an outbuilding - and
about an hour's sleep most mornings. Graphic: Map by staff.