Residents ask: Is urban growth truly
inevitable?
Highway opposition says no
gpawlaczyk@bnd.com
When
she was 17, Pat Schmitt moved into the little farm house on the prairie beside
Scott-Troy Road in O'Fallon Township that has been her home for 50 years.
But it wasn't
until six months ago that the 67-year-old Schmitt got her first nearby
neighbors, who live directly across the road in the pricey Braeswood Estates
subdivision.
"Who would
have thought that someday I would have neighbors who live in a $400,000
house?" she said.
Her children
grown, Schmitt, a widow, recently learned that her home of half a century is in
the path of a proposed four-lane highway.
Unlike the
affluent subdivision across the road, which is set back far enough from the
highway's path, she is likely to lose her house to construction. So she's
started going to meetings held by a group of area rebels who call themselves
Stop 158.
"All these
people moving in around here and it's me that's got to go," Schmitt said.
Stop 158 represent
dozens of landowners from Madison to Monroe counties who find themselves in the
path of the proposed highway called the Gateway Connector, and who face the
prospect of losing their homes.
"If no one
rebels, then things will remain the same," said Stop 158 founder Richard
Ellerbrake, who lives about a mile further north from Schmitt's house on
Scott-Troy Road.
The highway would
generally follow Scott-Troy Road from Troy south to Interstate 64, and then
Illinois 158 to Columbia and the Jefferson Barracks Bridge.
The highway will
eventually force Schmitt and others living on 118 residential properties along
the corridor to give up all or part of their land to the Illinois Department of
Transportation.
In IDOT's view,
new homes and increased traffic have already arrived. The Gateway Connector is
designed to accommodate this growth.
Cindy Stafford, an
IDOT engineer and overall supervisor of the connector project, said that
sometime after Jan. 1, registered letters will be sent to property owners
within a 400-foot-wide, 41-mile long corridor. The letters, required under
state law, will prevent large scale commercialization of the corridor by
prohibiting big retail stores and subdivisions.
Stafford said that
in about 10 years, when engineering is complete and funding is obtained,
concrete for the first section of the highway might be poured. But by starting
now, having the "protected corridor" will mean less in tax money to
buy the land and the restriction against new subdivisions will eliminate having
to displace even more people.
Even with the
prospect of moving a decade away, residents still are worried.
Janice Loyet, who
lives with her husband, Gary, on a farm further down Scott-Troy Road, said,
"We plan to live our lives here. We don't want to move."
Stop 158 meets in
Ellerbrake's 19th century farm house on Scott-Troy Road. His home also is in
the path of the connector. While the core group consists of about a dozen
regular members, scores more like Schmitt also attend the meetings
occasionally.
Like most members
of his group, Ellerbrake, the former chief executive officer of Deaconess
Health Systems in St. Louis, does not accept the theory offered by proponents
of the connector that growth is inevitable and new highways are the best way to
handle growth.
"We
anticipate that a four-lane, limited access, interstate-type highway will
exacerbate the problem by making transportation so easy that it will draw even
more people to even more subdivisions, encroaching on valuable farm land and
changing the character of the landscape and its people forever," he said.
Their solution to
transportation problems is not to spur more growth with a new highway, but to
improve the roads that exist now by adding turn lanes and widening
intersections.
Jack Norman of
Columbia, a retired owner of a surveying company who heads the Columbia
contingent of Stop 158, questioned how the connector idea ever got started.
"Some freshly
minted engineer probably said, "That looks like a good idea," he
said.
But IDOT documents
show that St. Clair County proposed the road as early as 1998.
Along Scott-Troy
Road, signs are visible in front yards and at rural intersections, urging
people to visit Stop158.org on the Internet. IDOT and Stop 158, have each
issued copies of CDs outlining their respective positions.
Stop 158 member
Manny Arzavala, a retired Air Force officer who, ironically, worked two years
for IDOT in Springfield, said that he and his wife built their dream home four
years ago, "and now IDOT wants to take our dream."
Wrong, said
Candace Sauermann, a civil engineer for IDOT and project manager for the
connector.
"The fact is,
they're coming. Drive down Scott-Troy Road and you will see one blasted
subdivision after another," she said.
But despite an
occasional, impassioned outburst on her part, perhaps sparked by being asked
the same question again and again -- "Is growth inevitable?" --
Sauermann has sympathy for those who will be displaced.
"My vision of
the community that I love is: Let's plan for the inevitable," she said,
"Let's zone it and protect it and provide adequate roads. Something has to
be done to accommodate the traffic we know is going to come."