news-record.com

GREENSBORO — State highway officials met Thursday in Raleigh to consider whether they can do anything to divert Greensboro’s future Urban Loop from two neighborhoods built by the same developer on opposite ends of the city.

But prospects are bleak for avoiding either of Keystone Group’s developments, the Quail Oaks neighborhood of single-family homes near

U.S. 29 and Liberty Square town houses on Old Battleground Road.

A planned interchange near Quail Oaks doesn’t look as if it can be shortened or otherwise altered to avoid a number of newly built homes, said Mike Mills of the N.C. Department of Transportation.

Design standards are strict and precise for interchanges where freeways meet, he said. “These are two interstates.”

That part of the loop will be Interstate 840, and U.S. 29 is to be upgraded to Interstate 785.

The next section of the loop, from Burlington Road to U.S. 29, is tentatively set for construction in 2012.

At Liberty Square across town, highway engineers are stymied by the landscape near the new town house community, said Mills, who is DOT’s division engineer for a five-county region including Guilford.

A natural drainage way lies in the path of the loop’s original 1996 design, which went just north of Liberty Square, and DOT can’t build a road through that sort of terrain, Mills said. Engineers had to veer into Liberty Square to avoid it, he said.

Mills and Greensboro resident Doug Galyon, chairman of the State Board of Transportation, met Thursday with DOT staff from the roadway design, public affairs and human resources sections.

They reported on the session later Thursday at the monthly meeting of the Greensboro Metropolitan Planning Organization, the transportation planning agency for much of Guilford County.

“We’re going to have to re-look at our corridor maps (for the Urban Loop) and be sure we do a better job of communicating to the citizens,” Galyon said of efforts to prevent future loop conflicts.

City Councilwoman T. Dianne Bellamy-Small said developers and real estate agents also might do better at alerting home buyers about the loop, which eventually will span 44 miles and encircle the city.

“The question has to be asked: Did the developer know and, if so, did he have a responsibility to (inform) the Realtor?” Bellamy-Small said.

Some residents of Quail Oaks and Liberty Square said Keystone Group did not fully inform them of the loop’s potential for disruption.

But company President Scott Wallace said agents told prospective buyers about the loop’s existence and had them sign “disclosure statements” acknowledging they knew.

In earlier interviews, Wallace said his company was blindsided by revisions to the original loop plans that have caused the problems at both developments.

But a former Keystone manager at Liberty Square, Betsy Lamb, told the News & Record that she was instructed to remove an alert about the loop from sales packets given to prospective customers there. Keystone denies the allegation.

If full disclosure of the loop is a problem, Bellamy-Small said, the city may need to “tweak” its ordinances to require it.

The city is working on improvements to its Web site that will allow prospective home buyers to enter any street address and quickly see a map of its proximity to the loop, said Adam Fischer, the city’s acting transportation director.

Residents have complained of incessant noise along the loop’s most recently opened section in southwest Greensboro.

The city could make developers build “noise walls” to protect any new neighborhoods near future loop segments. But the technology is too iffy, said Councilman Robbie Perkins, MPO chairman.

Meanwhile, Mills said DOT planners are reviewing maps looking for any conflicts with developments along the unbuilt part of the loop from Burlington Road in east Greensboro to Bryan Boulevard on the west.

The loop is more than half complete with about 25 miles built so far. But the problem is, it will be “beyond 2015” before the rest is in place, Galyon said.

“And that,” he said, “is a long time away.”

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com