Council considers new name for Meadowcreek Parkway

Former Senator John Warner (R-VA) has previously declined to have the road named after him

The campaign to rename the Meadowcreek Parkway after outgoing Senator John Warner has reached the Charlottesville City Council.
Former Albemarle County Supervisor Forrest Marshall appeared before Council on January 5, 2009 to ask for their support in his quest to honor Senator Warner.

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“No one that I know of in modern times has done as much for this community,” Marshall said. He pointed to Warner’s support in keeping the National Ground Intelligence Center in the region, as well as Warner’s work to secure a $27 million earmark to pay for the grade-separated interchange that will connect the parkway with McIntire Road and the 250 Bypass. 

Marshall’s efforts were supplemented by Tim Hulbert, the President of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce. He said at least some component of the Parkway should be named after Warner, if not the entire project.

Councilor David Brown, who visited Warner’s Washington office to lobby for the earmark, said he was hesitant to change the name of a road which has had the same name for 35 years while in the planning stages.

“I’m not keen on changing that name but I am keen on honoring Senator Warner because I think he’s done a tremendous amount for our community,” Brown said. He said Warner’s service should be honored by a “constant reminder” of some kind.  Councilor Julian Taliaferro said the community owes Warner “a debt of gratitude” and agreed that some component of the Parkway be named for him. Councilor Holly Edwards also said she could support some form of appreciation.

Though he did not speak on the matter during Council’s meeting, Parkway opponent and former City Council Candidate Peter Kleeman wrote on his blog that it would be unfair to name the road after Warner.

“If this road is constructed as the John W. Warner Parkway, drivers on this facility will link Senator Warner to the long delays they will surely endure attempting to use this facility as a quick way to get from Northern Albemarle County to Downtown Charlottesville,” Kleeman wrote. He also called for Councilors Brown, Taliaferro and Satyendra Huja to vote against the road. Mayor Dave Norris and Councilor Edwards are on record as voting against the road’s construction.

Sean Tubbs

Comments

[stratton salidis]

I think the Warner Porkway is a more fitting name. If built, it will benifet only the sprawl developers of 29 north. For a look at who's pushing this project, google the Free Enterprise forum, check out the board of directors and where they own land. If Mr Warner knew all the details of how this road has come along, he may not feel so honored.

The city is planning to use Federal funds to build an Interchange to link the Meadowcreek Parkway (technically called Mc Intire Rd Extended within Charlottesville) to Rt. 250 while seeking to avoid the application of section 4f, 106 and NEPA to the state funded Parkway itself by segmenting these into separate, “independent” projects.

It should be noted that the Parkway itself was a federally funded project until these very laws proved prohibitive. Without the interchange the Parkway would end 775 ft away from rt. 250 in a field. As a rule, if Federal funds are needed for a project to be functional, Federal laws apply to the whole project. Sen. Warner was told by City Council member David Brown and other local luminaries that there was "broad consensus" (public hearings show the opposite, but Brown choose to heed the results of the local sprawl industry’s Free Enterprise forums push poll instead) for the Parkway if only he could get federal funding for a grade- separated interchange. Now the pro-parkway crowd is claiming that Charlottesville had agreed to build the 17 lane at-grade intersection before money for the interchange came along. This is a re-writing of history, as anyone who cares to look at the Charlottesville’s stated requirements for the road would plainly see.

How can our pro – Parkway councilors (Brown, Taliaferro and Huja) call themselves “green” while spending Charlottesville’s scarce transportation dollars on a road through its central park and Downtown in the age of climate change and war for oil? How is meaningful citizen involvement possible when the plans are deliberately based on false assumptions by our own officials as a means of misleading the public and subverting the law?

Is the press in this town lazy, and willing to repeat whatever they’re told, or just too fond of selling full page ads for car lots and exclusive sprawl developments?

Are we done with “urban renewal” and freeways thru cities, or have these mechanisms evolved a more subtle face and pace?

How about a Meadowcreek nature preserve and Bikeway instead? The land is pretty much bought; all we have to do is cut the road part out. The right thing to do costs less than destroying our greenspace. How about effective, convenient, comfortable transit people want to use? Isn’t this what we say we are about?