hburgnews.com

Forbes Development, the company that recently built Forbes Crossing on the corner of Evelyn Byrd and Reservoir, is developing 10 acres of land near the intersection of Country Club Road and Linda Lane. They plan to turn “Flagstone” into another retail center. The DNR reports that, for some odd reason, Forbes is complaining that the city has been making things difficult for them to move forward with the plans, even though the city manager’s office had no prior knowledge of the building plans.

Meanwhile, Rocktown reports that the city is mulling plans to build a combined elementary and middle school building in that same neighborhood. In conjunction with the school, the city is planning a 4-lane continuation of Linda Lane that would connect Country Club and Smithland, complete with turning lane, sidewalks, and bike lanes.

I’m curious: do these plans include improvements to Country Club Road? Or how about the existing Linda Lane? The school and the Flagstone shopping center will undoubtedly increase traffic on the road between Shoney’s and Lowes. That double-light intersection is already dangerous enough as it is. You can’t even tell whether the second light is green or not until you’re halfway through the intersection.

UPDATE: I emailed the city manager to ask him about this. He wrote back: “There are plans to improve Linda Lane and Country Club Road. The sidewalk is planned for East Market within a year.” That last part refers to making East Market Street more pedestrian-friendly, especially between Shoney’s and the mall.

Apparently there’s a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo over the property purchase for the school. My guess is that Sierra Development wasn’t too happy about the city using eminent domain to take the land from them. The city offered Sierra $1 mil for the land. Sierra said it was worth $2.6 mil.

-finnegan