Wayzata neighbors fight county plan to modernize old road

Residents near Bushaway Road say project would destroy houses, hundreds of trees -- and their neighborhood.

By KEVIN DUCHSCHERE, Star Tribune

Last update: November 15, 2009 - 10:33 AM

To its Wayzata neighbors, Bushaway Road is a charming, oak-lined drive that's as old as the state itself and redolent of Lake Minnetonka's rich and colorful past.

To Hennepin County officials, Bushaway is also a crumbling section of County Road 101, a former state highway that provides a major link in the regional road system and should accommodate walkers and cyclists as well as increasing car traffic.

As a spring design deadline looms for a new and improved Bushaway, neither side seems much closer to figuring out how to reconcile the neighbors' hopes for some minor sprucing up with the county's desire for a wider, safer roadway.

Ron Anderson, a longtime Bushaway resident and former University of Minnesota sociology professor, said the county has compromised on some of its plans but not nearly enough. He said the county would have to take out two homes and 350 trees, some of them ancient, to make room for the widened road.

"Our hope is that we can negotiate the county's plans down to a smaller scope," Anderson said. "Our next step is to provide engineering drawings that are an alternative to what they're proposing."

"Hennepin County treats the citizens as a minor inconvenience," said Mark Westlund, another Bushaway Road resident and former member of the Wayzata City Council and Lake Minnetonka Conservation District. "We're not opposed to change. We're opposed to destruction."

Nick Peterson, the county's project manager, said the controversy is no surprise.

"It's not uncommon that our projects make people emotional, and it's a difficult thing to do," he said. "We've got to try to minimize and then mitigate our impacts while trying to meet our goals for the region as a whole."

Project's cost: $19 million

The Bushaway work is part of a reconstruction of County Road 101, which came to the county from the state in the late 1990s with a host of maintenance needs. The cost to rebuild the stretch from Wayzata Boulevard to Minnetonka Boulevard -- of which Bushaway forms a portion a little over a mile long -- is $19 million, Peterson said.

Under the county's plan, most of Bushaway would remain two lanes wide, but with bigger shoulders and a bike trail up to 8 feet wide. Turn lanes would be added in areas of heavier traffic, and intersections at McGinty and Breezy Point Roads would be enlarged, perhaps with roundabouts.

"We've tried to be sensitive to the context," Peterson said.

But neighbors have banded together to create an opposition website and the Bushaway Preservation Project to raise money to cover research and negotiating expenses.

The Preservation Project commissioned a report by a national architectural firm that concluded the neighborhood qualifies for the National Register of Historic Places, a status that could make it tougher for the county to significantly change the road.

The county needs to win backing for its plans from the adjacent communities, which include Minnetonka and Woodland. Wayzata is standing by the neighbors and encouraging the county to be as sensitive to their concerns as possible, Mayor Ken Willcox said.

"There can be a balance. You can accommodate safety without destroying that stretch of road," he said. "When you start expanding the road for trails ... as robust as elsewhere along 101, you start taking down lots of trees and historic amenities that the county likes to see."

Kevin Duchschere • 612-673-4455

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