Continued: Road plan pits pains of widening and of standing pat

During a morning visit last month, Marilyn Hamm shushed a visitor at her kitchen table and pointed out the picture window.

A doe had slipped into the wooded yard; it lingered, looking through the glass at Hamm, then edged to a corn feeder for a late breakfast.

Around the side of the house, Hamm's son, Doug, extended his arms, his fingertips brushing the wall. Just a few feet away, orange-flagged stakes marked the edge of a proposed walking path, the western edge of an expanded Radisson Road.

Marilyn Hamm stands to lose the wildlife habitat outside her kitchen window, the deer, foxes and birds that give her joy each day. She is among a group of residents whose property would be affected by a proposed Anoka County project to widen Radisson Road and Bunker Lake Boulevard in north Blaine.

Angry residents along the northernmost 1.4 miles of Radisson Road in Blaine exemplify the adage that change can be painful. The pain is real, but Anoka County officials argue that the need for the project also is real. Daily traffic counts already meet the threshold for an expansion, and the figure is projected to double by 2030.

As proposed, Radisson Road, also known as County Road 52, will go from two lanes to four, with new turning lanes, a concrete center median, a shoulder and a walking trail. The work, which also affects a swath of Bunker Lake Boulevard, could begin in the fall.

On Thursday, Blaine City Council members will weigh the pain against the gain as they vote whether to accept a joint powers agreement with the county. The city can tap into $520,000 in federal funding to bring its share down to $459,000 of the $12 million project. Without the city, though, it's likely the project -- and millions more in federal funding -- will go away for good.

The vote was delayed June 18, when the city asked the county to match a $100,000 fund to replace lost trees, berms and fences, and to move toward reducing the speed limit to 45 miles per hour from 55.

Preliminary agreements have been reached on those issues, and Blaine Mayor Tom Ryan confirmed that the council will vote this week.

"After a year, it's time," he said, adding that he supports the plan. "We worked through a lot of the issues. I think the county is done making changes. We've made ours, and now it's time to vote for it."

Still, he said, he didn't know which way the vote will go, calling it "a political nightmare." Opponents have been very vocal, he noted, and supporters have been very quiet.

Julie Sobania lives in Ham Lake and works in St. Paul.

Now, she said, she has several poor options to get to a bus in Lino Lakes. Central Avenue is snarled from construction, she said. Lexington is rutted and dangerous. Radisson is narrow, and four-way stops make rush hour a mess.

"I'd like to see anything with four lanes coming that way that would be an option to Hwy. 65," she said. "I have a lot of sympathy and empathy for those people, but I really believe progress needs to go on, and hopefully there's some way they can be compensated for their loss."

Hamm, editor and publisher of the local Blaine Banner, said she does not want to leave the home she and her late husband made for their five children. She's lived at the corner of 125th Lane NE. and Radisson Road for 56 years.

"I've turned down several offers for this property that were quite high, but I don't want to leave," she said. "This is my home."

Anoka County Commissioner Dick Lang said he'd visited with her.

"It's going to be an imposition on some people, no doubt about it," he said. "Progress is sometimes not a very good thing, but it happens. We have to look out not only for now, but we have to look out 20 years down the road, for my grandkids or my kids who are going to be coming down that road. It's our obligation to make that road safe."

The county has settled with 27 out of 61 affected property owners in Blaine, and 21 of 55 in Ham Lake. The county continues to work toward getting more settlements, with mixed success. The Ham Lake council will vote on its joint powers agreement Monday, but City Administrator Doris Nivala said the 1-mile project has not inspired the opposition that it has in Blaine.

Several Blaine residents agree that improvement is needed. But they object to the county's handling of the project. Many argue that the design is overkill meant to address unrealistic growth projections, or that the county's own traffic counts are skewed up by construction on Central and Lexington. Others say they're offended by the county's appraisals of their property.

At an open house in May, residents disputed the county's noise measurements. They lobbied to shrink the project or put it off, to extend sound walls, add stoplights and save trees. Many worried about the effect increased noise and traffic would have on their quality of life, their children's safety and their ability to proceed with their plans for their homes.

Anoka County Engineer Doug Fischer countered that traffic is coming, whether the road is widened or not, but that the project would expedite travel and make a safer roadway.

He warned that if the City Council rejects the project, it will go away, and that refusing a federal allotment could close the county's federal funding channel for years.

"We're doing it because it's the right thing to do," he said. "We've got a lot of history of building a lot of roads in this county and they're driving on a lot of them. ... It's just more up-close and personal for them."

Maria Elena Baca • 612-673-4409