ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 2, 1996 TAG: 9611040021
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: RADFORD
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Some Pulaski County neighbors of a planned regional jail are still unhappy about it, but have agreed to work with the jail authority to make the addition as painless as possible.
"We didn't want this jail there in the first place. We're not happy with it," said Arnold Edwards, who lives in the Staff Village subdivision just outside the Dublin Industrial Park. Dublin Town Council has sold a tract within that park to the New River Valley Regional Jail Authority as a site for the 240-bed facility.
"The town of Dublin sold us out," Edwards told the authority at its meeting Friday. "We understand that the regional jail has to be someplace But we don't want to sacrifice the privacy that we have," he said. "We have a lot of senior citizens in this area, and they're scared of this jail."
On Friday, Assistant Pulaski County Administrator Peter Huber, who represents the county on the authority, moved that an advisory committee be set up including representatives from the neighboring Staff Village and Fair Acres subdivisions. Pulaski County Sheriff Ralph Dobbins, the county's other representative, seconded it and the motion passed unanimously.
Dobbins, Huber and authority Chairman Bob Lloyd, who is Radford's assistant city manager, will serve on that committee. John Wenrich will represent the Staff Village residents, with Marty Hale as his alternate. Representatives of the Thompson & Litton engineering firm, Virginia Department of Transportation and Dublin Town Council will be added.
Wenrich presented citizen concerns to the authority, including a direct access road from Virginia 100 through the industrial park to the jail instead of current plans for smaller roads that would take jail traffic through residential neighborhoods.
Other neighboring citizen suggestions included large trees to help screen the jail building from public view, thorny bushes instead of fencing, and a shifting of jail parking lots toward Dublin and away from the outlying subdivisions.
Some of those concerns got settled immediately. For example, the building will not resemble a conventional jail from the outside but will be designed to fit in with other park buildings. It will require no fencing because everything, including recreational facilities, will be inside.
Huber said the shifting of parking lots might force the jail itself closer to the subdivisions. The advisory committee will look at the pros and cons of that.
Lloyd pointed out that the authority had kept the jail as far as possible from the residences, even though it will cost more money to do so. "We've got about 50,000 yards of extra dirt that we've got to put someplace," he said.
Many of the citizen requests seem reasonable, Lloyd said, but must be studied from the standpoint of costs and their impact on the town. "Whether Dublin will permit us to come in from the other end up there, I have no idea," he said.
"We don't know what the impact of the jail's going to be, but we know that we're stuck with it," Edwards said. "We want to have some say in where the roads go."
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