Nearly 200 Ashborough East residents attended Monday night’s council meeting to protest design plans for the Dorchester Road widening project in their neighborhood.
George Barber, an Ashborough East resident and engineer, spoke on behalf of the residents during a lengthy presentation to the council.
Barber outlined specific concerns with the project, including the removal of the neighborhood’s entrance signs, encroachment on the neighborhood’s vegetative buffers and the addition of a “monstrous” acre-sized retention pond to the area.
“(These plans) will result in the destruction of the (neighborhood's) appeal and loss of property values,” Barber said. “This will ripple through our entire community.”
More than 370 residents have signed a petition opposing the plans, Barber said.
Plans to widen Dorchester Road to a four-lane highway with bicycle lanes and a center turning lane have been in the works for two years, but Barber said Ashborough East residents weren’t given an opportunity by the design engineers to review the final plans.
Orange flags now dot the road, marking where new boundaries are to be moved before the project breaks ground, which is set for summer 2010.
Barber said the residents don’t oppose the widening project, but they feel that the current plans take too much away from their side of the street rather being evenly split between the Ashborough East neighborhood and the Ashborough neighborhood, which is located across the street.
“One hundred percent of the construction occurs on the east side,” Barber said.
The project is being paid for with the one-cent sales tax increase and designed by the firm Davis & Floyd.
Barber presented design alternatives for the widening, that the Ashborough East residents find more appealing. They include either eliminating or narrowing the proposed bike path, and scaling back on the drainage ponds and canals planned for the neighborhood. Barber said the alternatives presented are also less expensive than current design plans.
According to Dorchester County Council Chairman Jamie Feltner, the residents’ concerns are being heard loud and clear.
“Davis & Floyd are reviewing some of their plans with residents since they brought their concerns,” Feltner said. He lives in the Ashborough neighborhood, west of Ashborough East.
“I spoke with Department of Transportation (officials), and they said they’d be glad to look over plans and alternatives with the bike path,” Feltner said. “The response was very good.”
Ashborough East resident Susannah Kaelin, who went door-to-door collecting signatures for the past two months, said residents don’t plan on giving up the fight to keep their neighborhood’s design intact.
“We’re willing to continue the fight,” Kaelin said after the meeting. “It’s not just our neighborhood; it’s the greater community.”
 
Contact Jenny Peterson at 873-9424 ext. 216 or JPeterson@journalscene.com.