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Aaron Selbig/Turnagain Times The sign for Diamond Jim’s liquor store in Indian has been in place for over 50 years. It is located in the Seward Highway right of way and eventually must be moved. |
By Aaron Selbig
Turnagain Times
For nearly two years, a handful of business owners in Bird and Indian have been fighting the federal government over whether or not they will be required to remove their signs along the Seward Highway. Most of them have flatly refused to do so and one of them, Diamond Jim’s Liquor Store proprietor Mary Lou Redmond, swore last year that if it came down to it, she would duct tape herself to the historical sign before allowing it to be torn down.
The resistors will be glad to learn that the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) has given up trying to enforce a deadline to remove the signs—at least for now.
“Is there a timetable? Not really,” answered FHA spokesman Doug Hecox from his office in Washington, DC. “We’re working with the Alaska Department of Transportation and there is progress that we find encouraging. We’re going to continue to do that.”
Alaska Department of Transportation spokesman Rick Feller said the sign issue was always a matter of federal, not state, law and that the FHA had already extended the deadline several times.
“At this point, we’re continuing to work with each property owner with his individual issue,” Feller said. “We’re helping them go through the appeal processes and going to FHA for their review and consideration.”
Several business owners, however, said they hadn’t had any contact with the FHA or DOT more than a year, and remained confused as to what exactly was expected of them. So far, the only local business to comply with the federal order is the Valley Bible Chalet in Indian.
“We took our sign down last year because we were told that, if we didn’t take it down, they were going to take it down for us and charge us for it,” said Pat Terwilliger, who lives in the small roadside church with her husband, Pastor Wendell Terwilliger. “We felt like we were being harassed.”
Terwilliger feels the removal of their sign has negatively affected traffic to the church, preventing newcomers and visitors from finding it.
The sign removal issue first arose in September 2006, when a letter was sent from the FHA to then-Alaska DOT Commissioner Mike Barton demanding the removal of the signs. Federal law considers all roadway business signs an unacceptable encroachment in the right-of-way, the FHA stated in the letter, and any highway improvement project completed with federal funding is subject to the law. Because previous work on the Seward Highway between mileposts 96 and 102 was done with $20 million in federal money, the Alaska DOT was faced with two choices: either remove the encroachments or reimburse the $20 million back to the federal government. The letter also made it clear that there would be no grandfathering rights for older signs (Redmond’s sign has been in place since 1957, surviving the earthquake of 1964) nor would any encroachment permits be issued for businesses in the area.
“The standard, cookie-cutter approach to creating uniformity on roadway signage works,” said Hecox, “right now there is a federal right-of-way there and that’s not a good place for those signs to be. Hopefully, we can figure out something that will make everybody happy.”
Exactly what that solution will be remains to be seen, but local residents and business owners can now turn their attention to another pressing concern in the Bird/Indian area: the possibility of a frontage road being built through their communities along the north side of the Seward Highway.
Last August, a well-attended and heated public meeting concerning proposals for a frontage road took place in the community hall at Indian Valley Meats. Steve Noble, a project engineer with DOWL Engineers in Anchorage, gave a presentation to local residents, outlining two options for improving safety in the area. The first option proposed constructing a turning lane on the Seward Highway in the Bird/Indian section. A section option proposed building a frontage road. It was the possibility of a frontage road that drew the ire of many residents.
“We were really upset last year when we heard about that,” said Veronica Lambertsen, owner of the Bird Ridge Motel and RV Park. “Personally, I’d rather have the turning lanes. A center turning lane would solve a lot of the safety issues.”
Terwilliger agreed that the turning lane option makes the most sense for the community, adding that she knew of no one in the Bird/Indian area who supports the frontage road idea. She said many children, including her Sunday school students, play in the area nearby the highway.
“If they put in a frontage road,” she said, “it’s going to be that much worse, because you’re going to have children that play here, even closer to the highway.”
Noble said the project is still in the preliminary stages, and that DOWL hopes to have engineering and environmental work completed by this winter. He is working closely with DOT on studying the alternatives, but they are still at least five years away from beginning any kind of construction. He said the final decision on the project is the responsibility of DOT, and when one of the construction options, either turning lanes or a frontage road, is chosen, he expects to hold another round of public meetings to receive input from the community.
“Public comment always influences what the solutions are,” he said, noting that DOWL has already received dozens of suggestions from local residents.
“The main thing they could do right now is slow the traffic down,” said Terwilliger, echoing the sentiment of several residents who have spoken to Noble. She suggests a speed zone limited to 45 miles per hour on the Seward Highway through the Bird/Indian area.
“That has been looked at several times,” replies Noble, “reducing the speed limit doesn’t always solve the problem. It can create more problems than it solves because you end up with impacts upstream and downstream of the stretch where it’s 45. In this particular case, it was determined that reducing the speed limit to 45 would not improve safety in this corridor.”
According to Rick Feller of DOT, safety was the impetus for exploring the highway project in the first place. That stretch of the Seward Highway through Bird and Indian averages nearly 8,000 vehicles per day, he said, and traffic can swell to 18,000 vehicles per day during holidays and peak traffic times.
“It really comes down to accidents,” said Feller, “the public spoke out and said that we needed to improve safety.”
Feller and Noble both expressed frustration that many residents in Bird and Indian continue to believe that the possible construction of a frontage road is tied to the demand for removal of local business signs.
“Unfortunately, the public has connected the two issues, thinking that we’re the reason that the signs have to be moved, and that’s not the case,” said Noble, “even if this project went away, they would still be moving those signs.”