Hoover residents oppose potential new routes out of Trace Crossings

Hoover residents pleaded with the Hoover school board tonight to not let the city use the road around Hoover High School as a new connector route between Trace Crossings and Alabama 150.

City officials have been eager to find a new way in and out of Trace Crossings and last week unveiled four potential routes to get to Alabama 150.

Two of them would go through the Cahaba River Estates community, one would go through the Willow Trace sector of Trace Crossings, and another would involve replacing a golf cart and walking trail between Willow Trace and Park Trace with a new road that goes through Hunter Street Baptist Church’s parking lot before connecting with 150.

All four routes would use Buccaneer Drive, the ring road around Hoover High School, as a connector to the rest of Trace Crossings.

City officials shared details of the four conceptual routes with the school board tonight, and residents from Cahaba River Estates, Willow Trace and Park Trace passionately shared their opposition.

Numerous residents of the 204-home Willow Trace community said they bought homes there because it’s a secluded community with one way in and one way out.

Adding school buses, young high school drivers, other Trace Crossings residents and people using the Hoover Metropolitan Complex is not a good idea, resident Mark Puhnaty said.

The narrow residential street is not capable of handling that kind of traffic, and it’s not safe to put that kind of traffic on a street where kids and adults frequently walk, he said.

It’s a typical residential street where residents, contractors and delivery people park on the street, and there’s not room for a lot more two-way traffic, residents said.

Zak Thomas said she’s concerned that home values will be cut in half. She doesn’t think the city should use any of the proposed routes.

“I am very upset,” Thomas said. “Why do they want to destroy somebody’s neighborhood so that somebody else’s new neighborhood can get out of Trace Crossings?”

RUINING TRANQUILITY

Cahaba River Estates residents said bringing school traffic and other traffic through their neighborhood would destroy the serenity and rural nature of their community. Donna Allen said Cahaba River Estates was there before the city of Hoover existed and when Alabama 150 was a dirt road. The main road, Cahaba River Estates Drive, is a windy road that doesn’t even have two full lanes in some places, and it’s beautiful, resident Heidi Hyde said.

She asked why the city is allowing the Blackridge community at the end of Stadium Trace Parkway to be a gated community, with no through access to Morgan Road for people coming from Trace Crossings. The city should use that as an alternate way out of Trace Crossings, she said.

Bill Bradley, a resident of Park Trace, said none of the proposed plans are viable. He said he can’t understand why the city continues to allow shopping centers and homes to be built without enough roads to support them. Developers should be putting up money for a solution to the traffic problems, he said.

One Willow Trace resident said he loves trees, but he’d rather see the city tear down the trees on Stadium Trace Parkway and build another lane there than come through the residential neighborhood streets.

Puhnaty said the Trace Crossings homeowners association owns some of the land the city would need to connect through Willow Trace or the golf cart trail. “We’re prepared to fight the battle as necessary to prohibit anybody from taking our property.”

One resident of Willow Trace said she is willing to lie down on the road to keep traffic from coming through their neighborhood. “I will not let those people come through our neighborhood,” she said. “That to me is a sin.”

Scott Willenbrock, another Willow Trace resident, said the city is trying to make up for years of not being forward thinking enough on traffic issues and now is coming to the school board to help solve this problem.

“Unfortunately, the solutions they proposed only generate more traffic for the school campus,” he said. “Asking the Board of Education to provide that land to solve this solution is very short-sighted and is going to impact many people in many neighborhoods negatively … Don’t let the city use your land to fix things that they should have fixed long ago.”

SCHOOL OFFICIALS' RESPONSE

School board President Craig Kelley said the school board is listening to the ideas being shared by the city as well as the concerns of residents. The school board is concerned about the safety, well-being and education of its students and others who visit school property, he said, but he declined to say what he thinks about the city using Buccaneer Drive as a connector route for non-school traffic.

Hoover schools Superintendent Kathy Murphy said she definitely hears the concerns of the community and the passionate requests not to let the city use Buccaneer Drive, but she thinks it’s too early to form a stance one way or the other. The school system at this point has not been asked to do anything, she said.

“I think there are lots of conversations here that need to transpire,” she said. She feels certain there will be more opportunities for residents to share their concerns with city and school officials.

NO DECISIONS MADE

Hoover City Administrator Allan Rice said the city is very much in the early conceptual stage of finding an alternative route out of Trace Crossings, and there will be plenty of opportunity for more public discussion and feedback from the public.

“There’s just no way the mayor, or any of the council members I’m sure, would go forward with a decision of this magnitude and an expenditure of this magnitude without hearing from the public and listening and heeding the input they get,” Rice said.

He emphasized that no route has been selected as a favorite and there is no prioritized list. These are simply options drawn up by an outside engineering firm that was given instructions to come up with options using existing roadways as much as possible, Rice said.

No money has been allocated, and no detailed traffic studies have been done, Rice said.

“We’re not sure any of this will ever happen,” he said. “There are a lot of plans that get drawn up that never see the light of day. … No bulldozers have been gassed up. No dump trucks are loaded with asphalt. We’re a long, long way from knowing if there ever will be another road into Trace Crossings.”

Rice and Hoover Councilman Mike Shaw on Monday night met with some Trace Crossings and Cahaba River Estates residents who attended a Hoover Planning and Zoning Commission meeting and voiced concern about the potential connector routes.

Shaw on Monday night said his initial reaction upon seeing the potential routes is that he wasn’t a fan of any of them.

Looking back over the years, “in a series of short-term decisions for Trace Crossings, long-term problems were missed. They didn’t quite connect the dots,” Shaw said.

The people making those decisions were very smart people, but “we’re in a little bit of a pickle now with how do we solve this problem.”

Shaw said the city’s elected officials need to take a broad look at traffic issues and listen well to residents before making any decisions. However, “I don’t think we’re going to get out of this cheap. … This is a big-dollar problem.”

Rice said neither the mayor nor council members ran for office so they could destroy home values and ruin the character of existing neighborhoods. They want to do what is right, he said.

Willow Trace resident Heather Jamison said she understands that talks are in the early stages, but she doesn’t think there should be any more time or money spent on the proposals shared thus far. “It should stop now.”

This article was updated at 11:52 p.m. with a lot of additional comments from meetings Monday and Tuesday night.