Thursday, February 25, 2010
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Get cracking on gate before it cracks apart
The spark toward repair efforts along the old road up Mill Mountain appear to have fizzled since last year.
Photos by SAM DEAN The Roanoke Times
A runner passes beneath the crumbling tollgate on Prospect Road in Roanoke. The road, the old way up Mill Mountain, is showing many signs of wear.
Gaping holes reside in the wood-shingle roof of the tollbooth. Restoration efforts for the structure have stalled.
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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This year, old man winter has delivered a beating to one of Roanoke's real treasures -- Prospect Road, aka the "old road" up Mill Mountain.
A little more than halfway up, freeze-and-thaw cycles have left grainy, pre-gravel spots in its asphalt surface.
Chances are good those rough patches will bloom into potholes this spring.
The old road's aging rock wall has suffered, too. In more places it's spilling onto the road or bulging as if it's about to.
Recently, a refrigerator-sized boulder tumbled down the mountain's steep slopes next to the under-and-over bridge and burst into a thousand shards and chunks on the pavement.
And near the bottom is the former tollgate, which arches proudly over the road and Mill Mountain Greenway.
The adjacent tollbooth's wood-shingle roof still shows gaping, splintered holes from a winter windstorm two years ago. Eaves over the arch are still busted and rotting, too.
Last March, I wrote about this marvelous road, some of the people who go there almost religiously, and the slow, inexorable toll Mother Nature is taking on it.
It sparked an initial flurry of interest in repairing the damaged tollgate and booth.
City Councilman Court Rosen, some members of the Kiwanis Club of Roanoke, and some folks from the Roanoke Parks and Recreation Department, began talking about repairs.
Some moms and dads who like to walk the road with their kids volunteered to help.
Rosen persuaded a construction company to donate some shingles. At least one contractor offered skilled labor.
More recently, Kevin and Nancy Dye, who live in Rockledge mansion, raised $3,500 for the tollgate's repair.
But the rotting eaves and holes in the roof remain.
Why?
The best answer I could come up sounds a little bit like the old saying "too many cooks spoil the broth."
"We had a meeting last summer and nothing else has happened since then," said Manly Aylor, one of the Kiwanians who volunteered to help.
"Last I heard, they [the city] were hiring an architectural firm here in town to look at it," Nancy Dye told me this week.
"We're still working on it," said Michael Clark, the city's recreation superintendent.
One of the issues that arose early in discussions was whether the eaves and tollbooth's roof should be repaired with the donated asphalt shingles Rosen procured.
Or should they use the wood shingles the booth has now? Or terra cotta tiles, the booth's original roofing material?
Those questions became "do we want to restore it back to the way it was built? Or do we want to button it up?" Clark said.
And that took most of the steam out of the movement.
One of the Kiwanians was John Bradshaw, an engineer, former CEO of Hayes, Seay, Mattern & Mattern and a former city planning commissioner.
He said the project suffered from too much talk and too many volunteers, and he simply lost interest.
In construction, "seventeen women and four children and eight husbands who are under duress are not going to get something done," Bradshaw said.
Meanwhile, the interested Kiwanians moved onto other do-good projects, such as signage along the Lick Run Greenway.
The city hired an architecture and engineering company, Clark said, and is awaiting a materials list from them on what it's going to take to fix it.
When is that going to happen?
"To put a time limit on it, I really can't," Clark told me. "Sooner rather than later would be our hope."
Here is a wee suggestion.
Hundreds of runners from all over will visit Roanoke the weekend of April 24 for the Blue Ridge Marathon on the Parkway. And during that brutal contest, they will run down that gorgeous old road and greenway and urban treasure.
Do what it takes to fix the battered tollgate before then.
Please?
