Photo by Ed McCoy
Nearly all of the 85 seats in the Greenfield Education and Training Center auditorium were filled before those folks got to look over and make comments and suggestions during a June 6 meeting on possible greenway routes between Daleville Town Center and the trails at Botetourt Center at Greenfield.
Roanoke Valley Greenway Commission representatives and County Administrator Gary Larrowe spoke briefly before having the audience retire to the center lobby where they could look over maps with different possible routes for the proposed greenway.
None seemed a clear choice, each partly because of neighborhood or landowner objections, although there were many who wanted to see a pedestrian/bicycle connection to not only the Cherry Blossom Trail and cross country/horse trail at Greenfield, but also to the new Ballast Point Brewery and the job opportunities coming with Eldor Corp. and what may move into the industrial shell building at Greenfield.
Those at the meeting were given the opportunity to offer objections, give route preferences or suggest alternates during the informal session with the maps.
Botetourt Recreation and Maintenance Director Jim Farmer said the county’s local greenway committee is reviewing the input from the meeting to see if a route in that corridor is viable. “If we can’t find one, we will expand our search area and end up taking a less direct path,” he said in an email.
The possible routes included one along US 220 between Daleville Town Center and Greenfield Education and Training Center, one through part of The Glebe property with a connection that would have to go through Orchard Lake or Fairview subdivisions, or across larger private parcels to connect with the US 220 route.
It’s been more than a year since the Board of Supervisors approved allowing the county administration to enter into a contract not to exceed $75,000 to hire a design firm to do the engineering for the greenway.
That was approved in March 2016.
In October 2015, the county was awarded $475,000 Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) MAP-21 Transportation Alternative Program matching grant to be used to build the greenway.
The supervisors had hoped the design work and construction would be done by this fall, and voted in March 2016 that the total contract for design and construction would not exceed $595,438. The grant is supposed to be spent by October 2019.
The delay has been in finding a route that hasn’t met with property owner opposition.
— Ed McCoy