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GREENSBORO — Let’s see if we can identify the villain behind the uproar along parts of Greensboro’s northern Urban Loop, the person or agency that allowed houses too close to the future interstate or, worse, directly in its path.

It could be the state Department of Transportation, which changed several key parts of the road without telling the public for as long as three years.

It could be city planners, who until recently seemed unaware that living beside a freeway might cause residents some heartburn.

Or how about the real estate developer who knows the road is coming, purchases cheap land nearby and builds homes without making sure buyers understand that six lanes of hurtling traffic are on tap?

Actually, the best bet may be the system itself: The uncoordinated process used by three levels of government — federal, state and local — to build major freeways across land that, for the most part, is privately owned.

“It frequently can result in things down the road that aren’t the most well-planned,” acknowledged Greensboro Planning Director Dick Hails. “But it’s part of the cost of preserving private property rights.”

In North Carolina particularly, it’s a system that takes everybody into account except the little guy who owns a home or is planning to buy one near a future highway of massive proportions.

It’s time to change that, at least in Greensboro, said Mayor Yvonne Johnson, who attributes some of the loop’s problems to clueless planning by state and, possibly, local administrators.

“I just don’t think they had a bona fide clue, though maybe they had some idea, how bad it was going to be,” she said of noise and related issues facing residents near the loop’s most recently opened section in southwest Greensboro.

“They weren’t decisions meant to hurt people,” the mayor said. “But when they do — when you know that because of A and B, this happened — you don’t go that route anymore. You get outside that box.”

Johnson is a strong supporter of the loop. Its completion is critical to Greensboro’s economic future and one of her highest priorities, she said.

But before the northern part goes further, the mayor wants to require that all nearby home buyers receive and sign a detailed disclosure form mandated by city government.

'Plain, old language’

The new form would replace vaguely worded documents some developers and real estate agents have given buyers to sign, fueling claims by a number of buyers they were not fully informed.

“It needs to be laid out so there is no question about whether they got the information. And in plain, old language,” Johnson said. “So folks can say, 'OK, you’re going to encounter noise, you’re going to encounter vibrations.’ Whatever it is needs to be laid out.”

Meanwhile, state DOT accepts some blame for not spreading the word adequately that major changes were afoot for the future loop, not until it was too late for more than a dozen families whose new homes now must be torn down.

“We’re going to have to do a better job of disseminating that information to the public,” said Doug Galyon, Greensboro resident and chairman of the state Board of Transportation.

And back at City Hall, planners are readying some changes to rules for residential development next to the loop, an effort begun last year at City Council’s behest. The changes would increase buffers and promote construction techniques that blunt highway noise.

Johnson said these revisions should be “stringent” to minimize future housing development next to the loop. In fact, she’d prefer no more at all, but says that’s likely unrealistic.

One flaw not being addressed involves the proverbial ounce of prevention. Nobody accepts responsibility for heading off such fiascoes as the Quail Oaks subdivision, for example, where the loop will take out a dozen houses and more than a block of the main street.

The majority of those homes were built after DOT knew some of the subdivision would be doomed by an expanded interchange at nearby U.S. 29.

Plan kept under wraps

No official from any level of government said anything to the developer or to Quail Oaks’ buyers until last January, when the final redesign was unveiled.

So who’s at fault? DOT and city government point to each other as the bulwark against such problems.

“We lean on the city and the county; they get these things (planning updates) and they know what’s coming,” said DOT division engineer Mike Mills. “We depend on them to tell the developers and I’m sure they do tell the developers.”

City officials respond that state DOT controls where the road goes. The city can’t tell a developer not to build simply because DOT knows some additional land will be needed there, they say.

“There are a lot of preliminary things that get kicked around,” said Adam Fischer, acting city transportation director. “We hesitate to make those official, because they are preliminary.”

“We’d hate to tell a property owner, 'Oh, here’s this preliminary plan that’s going to take place,’ ” he said, “when we know full well, from experience that plan could change. And the final design actually may impact him more, it may impact him less, we don’t know.”

Problems at Quail Oaks and several other places along the loop’s future route stem from changes in Federal Highway Administration standards, which have forced the loop outside its original pathway. Other problem areas include the loop’s interchange at North Elm Street, a stretch between Lawndale Avenue and Old Battleground Road, and the nearby Battleground Avenue interchange.

Federal design, safety and environmental rules require DOT to either take more land or use a slightly different route than specified in these trouble spots 13 years ago, when the state filed the loop’s official “corridor protection map” with Guilford County officials.

Outside the corridor

That map protects a 300-foot-wide swath where the road will go some day, blocking property owners from developing there before giving DOT three years notice and a chance to buy the necessary land.

The story of Quail Oaks showcases the major weaknesses in building projects of such gigantic size as the 43-mile loop, which could still take decades to complete. So far, about 25 miles have been built.

Planned for 129 single-family homes, Quail Oaks sits next to land set aside in the 1996 corridor map for an exit ramp from the loop onto U.S. 29.

The two real estate firms developing it, Southeast Land Co. and Keystone Group, were within their rights to build there. “They were completely outside the corridor,” DOT’s Mills said.

But unknown to the developers in November 2004, shortly before they began construction, state and federal officials threw a monkey wrench into the 1996 plan: They decided to forge a high-speed link from Greensboro to Danville, Va. by upgrading U.S. 29 to interstate status.

That meant new federal standards for the loop’s interchange at U.S. 29, greatly expanding the land needed.

Did DOT announce this to the public so people had a heads-up? No.

Planners simply didn’t know enough to say exactly which land or how much was needed, Mills said.

DOT did have a rough idea by October 2005, when right-of-way negotiators were authorized to consider buying land in Quail Oaks to save it from development.

“I rode out immediately and looked at the subdivision,” DOT negotiator Ritchie Tuttle said. “You already had subdivision streets in, houses were in, and it was already past the point of us trying to save funds by buying vacant land as opposed to improved land.”

Private property rights

His job was to look out for the interests of the state taxpayer. But who was looking out for the unlucky folks who would eventually buy those doomed houses, one built as late as mid-2008?

Nobody, as it turned out.

And why did city government keep issuing building permits in Quail Oaks, knowing some likely sat in the new interchange’s way?

Two reasons, city officials say: First, DOT still hadn’t finished the final design, so the exact layout was unknown until last December.

Second, until DOT is ready to write the developer a check for property not protected by the 1996 map, he has a right to keep building there, a right protected by a long history of court rulings.

“If we were a socialist state, they could say, 'We’re going to build a road through your property at some point in the future; therefore, you can’t do anything with it now,’ ” says Marlene Sanford, president of the Triad Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition. “But we aren’t.”

That leaves it up to developers and real estate agents to be fully candid with home buyers close to the loop, a test that a number of residents say they flunked.

Which is where Mayor Johnson comes in with her proposal for a standard, plainly worded disclosure form for anyone buying near the future expressway.

“You have to protect people as best you can,” she said. “When we have these new requirements, I think at least some people will say, 'Maybe they did hear us.’

“And maybe the mistakes won’t be made again, whoever made them, whether it was the state or a joint effort or whatever.”

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