Tonight, two of seemingly countless pieces of the Meadowcreek Parkway (MCP) are in front of City Council: construction easements for the Melbourne Road section and the storm water management design for McIntire Road Extended. It will be interesting to see if the new council does any major maneuvering on the MCP as a whole with these two pieces.
If you think about the MCP as a house of cards, pulling one card out sends that whole thing crumbling. (You may also use a Jenga metaphor, if you wanna avoid the cliche route.)
While the easements are a big deal—they give VDOT the go-ahead to start digging—the storm water management is key. That’s because, back in October, council put three conditions on another set of easements, these for McIntire Road Extended. While council voted for the easements, they are contingent upon a couple of things. One of them is finalized storm water plans.
Another is the 11 acres of replacement parkland from VDOT, which hasn’t been done, and, according to Assistant City Manager Maurice Jones, has no timeline for completion.
The third? An above-grade interchange at McIntire and 250. You know, the kind that council recently sent back to the drawing board.
So, no storm water design, no above-grade interchange, no road.
These conditions seem like good pressure points if certain councilors wanted to stop the MCP. If one were to push for an at-grade interchange—which a couple members of the public called for last meeting—that’d be one way. The other would be dragging feet on the storm water design. A third might be voicing reluctance to hand over easements to VDOT without all the replacement parkland in hand.
