How did this happen? Did someone fall asleep at the wheel?
It hasn’t happened over night. The deterioration of Oak Valley Lane (henceforth, OVL), most pronounced where it terminates at French Drive (henceforth, FD), has occurred over roughly 35 years. Tricia, my wife, and I distinctly remember the day we happened upon the Townsend Forest development, fell in love with it and decided to plant ourselves here. It was 1986, and barricade was across the road roughly in alignment with where our driveway is today. At that barricade stood a fit, white-haired man named French Wise, and beyond him fresh pavement just completed that day. The paving went down Oak Valley Ct. (henceforth, OVC) to the right and to FD heading north. And the section of FD from where it gets to the creek going towards Yanceyville Rd. and in the other direction past the Duke Energy power line easement (towards the Youngs and Hilliards) was also paved. It would be several years before the cul-du-sac was added on this end, and the third phase of Townsend Forest resulted in the extension of FD to actually meet Yanceyville Rd.
French Wise was a Greensboro veterinarian, and along with his cousin, Bevery French Thorburn, developed phases 2 and 3 of Townsend Forest. Wise explained to us that the roads had been built to meet all requirements so that they would qualify for state maintenance. When that responsibility takeover would occur would depend upon how quickly lots sold, houses were built and a certain “density” of homes were present. Density was Wise’s term, but its exact meaning was never qualified for us.
Here is, as Paul Harvey used to say on his radio program, “the rest of the story.”
The central question is why did ONE little section of road NOT qualify for state maintenance when the rest did? Everything in this part of the subdivision got paved at the same time by the same contractor to the same standards. There is no way to be certain, but I will provide some theories.
Theory one has to do with the fact that this road segment, bordered by only FIVE lots, was slower to get houses on it and that three of the five lots are situated on corners. It’s ironic that the lots on the corners of FD and OVL (on the north end) and OVC and OVL (on the south end) have state maintenance on one adjoining street while the other adjoining street, OVL, doesn’t get maintained.
To add further context, this road section and the five lots constitute the entirety of the 7600 “block” of OVL. Contrast this with the 7500 block of OVL that commences at its intersection with Townsend Forest Rd. and goes more than 1/2 mile to the Eanes residence at the SE corner of OVL and OVC. Their address is 7522. There are 20 homes in the 7500 “block,” and soon there will be four houses on five total lots in the 7600 block. George Yost and Wendy Armel’s house on the northwest corner of OVL and FD, scheduled for completion this summer will mean that only one lot in the 7600 block will have no house on it. That is the rather unkempt lot between the McArthur’s house (chalet style at OVL and OVC) and the McMeekin’s residence at the northeast corner of OVL and FD. That’s quite a disparity in the number of homes for these two “blocks.”
I don’t know whether French Wise knew what he was talking about with “housing density,” but essentially with three of five lots in the 7600 block being owned and built upon for around 30 years (Williams, McArther and McMeekin), and two lots NOT featuring houses (vacant lot at 7602 with unknown ownership and Yost/Armel lot soon to be completed), perhaps the 7600 block didn’t ever have the requisite density to qualify. Or maybe nobody at the state ever studied the subdivision plat to understand how few potential building sites were actually on this stretch and how many of those lots were on corners where driveways might have been located on adjoining roads. And maybe driveway location means nothing in terms of a house’s address. Both the McArthurs and the McMeekins have drives, respectively, facing OVL and FD, but both residences actually reference OVL for their addresses.
Bottom line, perhaps this road portion should have always been eligible for state maintenance but the state simply didn’t understand that. I can provide a bit of credence to this theory by pointing out that once the state actually DID repave this portion of road and for a brief time removed the State Maintenance Ends signage. I suspect the state would say they repaved as a mistake, and I have no proof other than the fact I saw them do it. Two subsequent repavings have excluded this section. Wish I’d thought to take photos and document with dates and other details.
Theory two kind of goes hand and glove with the first theory. French Wise and Beverly Thorburn quickly sold off available lots in Townsend Forest phase 2. Their concentration then turned to phase 3 of Townsend Forest beginning from the bottom of FD where the Solomon and Clearence houses stand across from each other today and proceeding to Yanceyville Rd. Phase 3 is a whole other story that I won’t go into here, but corner me sometime and I’ll give you the scoop. Interesting and funny.
More importantly, new and bigger projects came along for Wise and Thorburn, the most notable I can cite being Tamanary Forest near the Church St. end of Air Harbor Rd. Couple that with the fact that both Wise and Thorburn were getting older and slowing down in their developer careers. Wise died in 1999, and the last I knew Thorburn was still living but in her eighties. They distanced themselves from Townsend Forest a long time ago and made no attempts that I’m aware of to tie up any loose ends remaining with Townsend Forest.
While I personally like the he fact that we don’t live under the scrutiny of an HOA or oversight board, it could simply be a matter of Wise and Thorburn dropping the ball and not taking proper steps or file required paperwork to cede road care to the state. Metaphorically, nobody was left to “manage the store,” During the eighties, nineties and even into the new Millenium, those of us here in Townsend Forest were busy with building our own homes and careers as well as rearing families. None of us really recognized a problem until it was rather late.
At this point I do want to recognize two previous efforts of which I’m aware to address this road issue. One was at least a decade-long attempt by Karen Eubanks who lived in what is now the McMeekin house. Karen and her husband pulled up stakes and retired to the beach a few years ago. Karen tried to press this with the state several times, but she was met with indifference and mixed messages. Never could get anyone to fess up as to what had gone wrong nor specifically spell out what would need to be done in order for the state to take over maintenance. The only thing they would say to her was that neighbors in the subdivision would need to repave the affected road without giving details about what that specifically meant.
More recently Shannon Norman on OVC similarly approached the state, She met some of the same obstacles as Karen did plus also faced the hurdles of being relatively new to the neighborhood and the fact that she utilized Next Door Townsend Forest (NDTF) as the principle vehicle to publicize things. That turned out to be disastrous, according to Shannon.
That would bring me to a third and final theory, and it’s already been mentioned. That is that only quite recently when George Yost and Wendy Armel purchased their lot at the corner of OVL and FD from the original owners, Frank and Gertrude Torres, did we finally meet this enigmatic density criteria that now satisfies the state. I find that hard to stomach because there were other sections of road that sat for years with no building activity yet the roads somehow seem to have gained state maintenance designation in both phases 2 and 3.
How refreshing it would be if we could definitively know the truth about why one piddly little stretch of road got excluded from care and degraded to the condition that confronts us now. Doubtful that we’ll ever know for sure. At this point it seems most sensible to start from what we do know, and we now have a well-defined solution that if we implement will never require us to deal with this again. OVL will most likely continue to see increased traffic volume, and that will only exacerbate the decline of its condition. That’s why I think this may be our last and best hope to make this needed road improvement, with your assistance.