C-VILLE * June 19-25, 2001
by Lisa Provence
No Welcome Wagon: Ivy Activists fear Faulconer's fury
The 45 people gathered at Murray Elementary School in Ivy on a Friday night were not there for an obligatory school function. In fact, many don't even have children at Murray. The attendees did have one thing in common: opposition to the development plans of their new neighbor, Faulconer Construction Company. That consensus resulted in the formation of the Morgantown Road Action Committee.
Morgantown Road is a historic slice of Ivy, passing through one of the County's oldest African-American communities. On past Murray and Millstone Preschool is the Ivy Industrial Park, where Faulconer Construction has purchased 27 acres to build new headquarters, a storage yard, and repair shop. Faulconer plans to store the heavy equipment it uses for excavation and road building on the site, which is zoned light industrial. To say that the MRAC thinks this is a bad idea is to put it mildly.
For instance, there's the zoning that allows light industrial in an area that's primarily residential.
"That's complete crap," says Tom Hutchinson, who lives across the street from the industrial park. "It's not light industrial. It's going to completely alter the neighborhood."
Hutchinson drove to Faulconer's current equipment yard off Rio Road and took pictures of cranes, loaders, huge flatbed trucks- even an oil spill.
"If you walk around in there," says Hutchinson, "you'll be horrified that polluted mess is going to be transported out to Ivy to the head waters of Ivy Creek."
Brian Wheeler isn't a Morgantown Road resident, but he constructed MRAC's electronic newsletter because his daughter attends Murray Elementary. He believes Morgantown Road, a narrow road that doesn't have lane stripes, will be unsafe with Faulconer's wide-load trucks joining the school bus traffic.
The Faulconer site is literally in Pam Evans' backyard. She likes to walk her children to school on the sidewalk-less Morgantown Road. "There are no laws to protect children's safety, but there are laws to protect views," she says. "You can build on a watershed, bring heavy equipment on a road where children walk, and store explosives near schools. Something's out of whack."
Is this a classic case of NIMBY- not in my backyard?
"It's a classic case of we're going to build beside a small school because we don't care about them,'" Evans replies.
Christopher Hyland, whose 19 acres border the Faulconer site, fears the wetlands on his property will be contaminated from chemicals such as benzene, which he says Faulconer uses to degrease its equipment.
Hyland, too, denies NIMBYism. "If it were a case of not in my backyard and my property value dropping, I'd just sue them," he says. "It's too dangerous to sit back on your hands and not take it through the courts. It would be criminally negligent."
"It's a bigger issue," he continues. "Areas like this"- the wetlands- "are disappearing rapidly. If natural areas can be preserved, people will benefit 100 years from now."
Faulconer withdrew its first plan after the Albemarle County planning department denied the critical slope waiver Faulconer requested to clear cut and extensively grade the site. Jack Sanford, president of Faulconer, did not return C-VILLE's phone calls.
Meanwhile, the action committee is not sitting idle while it waits for Faulconer's next plan. "This is going to be a long fight," vows Hutchinson.
Hyland echoes that. "Basically, it's an over-my-dead-body situation," he says. These days, hell hath no fury like a neighbor scorned, so perhaps Faulconer should be gearing up for the fight of its life.
-Lisa Provence
