University of Virginia Library

Saving A Neighborhood

Outrage is too mild a word to describe
the reaction of residents of the Grady and
Gordon avenue areas to the surprise disclosure
this week of plans for a highway
complex cutting through the heart of the
University residential community.

This outrage appears to us justified in
view of three developments:

1) The drastic transformation of a
residential area to a commercial one so
close to the University.

2) The ineptitude and furtiveness of the
Charlottesville Planning Commission in
dealing with the plan, and

3) The University's role—either through
ignorance or design—in seeming to condone
the plan.

Although the whole 20-year road construction
program is still wrapped in secrecy
and confusion, the parts affecting the growth
of the University deserve very close attention.

As Mr. Gunter of the School of Engineering
pointed out to the City Planning Commission
at Monday night's packed meeting,
the project—particularly the use of Gordon
and Grady Avenues as links between Preston
Avenue and a new highway connecting Ivy
Road with Rugby Road—will destroy the
present residential area.

Not only will several fraternity houses
be demolished, but all the residences on
the two streets, as well as the Martha
Jefferson Nursing Home and the Venable
School, will be confronted with a major
cross-town thoroughfare in their front yards.

Who would want to live in such a neighborhood?
It seems inevitable that the now
quiet and tree-shaded blocks, filled with
historic associations for the University,
would be deserted to filling stations and
hamburger stands.

Who at the University would want such
an unsightly conglomeration—another Route
29—so close to the center of the Grounds?

And with the University's ambitious plans
for expanding in the Copley Hill area, is
a four-lane highway cutting between the
old Grounds and the new very desirable?

As for the City Planning Commission,
Mr. Sensbach's remark that the situation
was "slightly embarrassing" was the understatement
of the evening.

There appear to be two plans from the
State Highway Department—one a vague,
20-year report, the other a detailed functional
design. The second was so "secret" that one
member of the commission said he'd never
seen it, although a member of the University's
engineering faculty was able to
produce part of it at the meeting.

The commissioners fortunately decided to
postpone any decision until the public is
better informed.

What is the most outrageous part of the
city's action, however, was the failure to
inform the residents of the area what was
being planned until the last minute. If it
hadn't been for the efforts of an interested
citizen who visited a number of residents
Monday to tell them about the meeting,
and the subsequent protests voiced to the
commissioners, would the plan have been
approved already?

The role the University is playing in the
affair is particularly intriguing. Searching
questions must be asked. The University's
planners have exhibited either shocking
ignorance of the city's highway schemes or
have willfully and cynically kept the students
and faculty members involved uninformed
as to what was to befall their homes
and fraternity houses.

Since the city's intentions of having another
east-west route have been known for
several years and since the Grady-Gordon
project possibly is scheduled for completion
by 1970, why were we assured any road
construction was six or ten years away?

In all those nicely drawn maps of the
Master Plan that Mr. Saunier has been
showing everybody these last two years,
why was there no indication of the new
highway?

In all the consultations various fraternities
and the IFC have held with University
officials about the prospect for a new
fraternity complex in the Lambeth Field or
Copley Hill areas, why was there no indication
a highway would be built?

Why were no officials of the University
at the meeting Monday night to defend the
integrity of the University community?

Why the cloak of secrecy when Mr.
Sensbach—the University's head planner
and a member of the City Planning Commission—must
have had some idea of what
was transpiring?

There is an obvious need for another
east-west highway, in view of the crowded
condition of Main Street and the startling
prediction that Charlottesville's population
will increase by two-thirds in the next
decade. That such a highway should ravish
an area that is just as much a part of the
greater University community as any part
of the Grounds is another matter.

A thorough study should be made of
alternate routes—widening Barracks Road or
Cherry Avenue, for example, or building a
road adjacent to the railroad tracks.

Residents of the neighborhood threatened
are understandably irate. We hope that the
rest of the University—students and members
of the faculty—will support them in their
righteous anger against the highway
planners.

Those interested should organize their
protest. They should make their views well
known to the city councilmen and to legislators
in Richmond who can influence the
State Highway Department. The University
administration in particular has an obligation
to make it clear that any highway
complex of the sort suggested must take the
needs of the University more into consideration.