City, developer argued about installing traffic signal, then 3 people died

(NC) City wanted developer to pay for needed traffic signal.

___________________

A dangerous delay
City, developer argued about installing traffic signal, then 3 people died
By Jefferson George
jgeorge@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Sunday, Jun. 28, 2009

For years, residents on the east side of Lake Wylie said the growth in homes and traffic along N.C. 49 demanded a new signal at Riverpointe Drive.

In spring 2008, Charlotte transportation officials agreed, asking the developer of a large community at that intersection to pay the cost.

But the developer, Crescent Resources, balked. Meanwhile, the city, despite the safety concerns, didn't install a temporary signal. Instead, the two sides spent months arguing over whether the traffic light was justified at the southwest Mecklenburg County intersection, according to e-mails released by the city at the Observer's request.

Even after Crescent and the city agreed to install the signal, several more months passed as Crescent put off its commitment to pay multiple times, blaming broken land deals and the sour economy.

It was only after a college professor, her 2-year-old daughter and a teen were killed after an April 4 crash at the intersection that Crescent turned over the money – more than 10 months after the initial request. And only then did the city install a temporary signal while a permanent one was being designed.

There's no way to know if a traffic signal would have prevented the deaths. The Saturday evening crash happened as two cars allegedly raced on the highway and one plowed into another vehicle entering the intersection.

But the e-mails reveal that a community leader and transportation officials clearly worried that not installing a signal could have tragic consequences.

The lack of action by the city and the developer came despite years of growth, some fostered by Crescent, along N.C. 49 – the backbone of Mecklenburg's southwest corner, where traffic has increased by almost 25 percent this decade and the population has nearly doubled to more than 41,000.

The e-mails reveal a jumble of jurisdictions, with the Charlotte Department of Transportation trying to interpret a county-approved zoning plan while coordinating a traffic signal for a state highway. City officials say they didn't have the power to penalize Crescent for repeated delays or otherwise demand money, and instead just issued warnings.

“We will not wait for accidents to occur,” wrote Scott Putnam, development services manager at CDOT, in July 2008 to Crescent.

The e-mails also contradict Crescent's explanation after the crash. The company said it didn't need to pay for the $220,000 signal until after the city had designed it. But the e-mails show Crescent didn't commit to paying because of its struggles with a tough real estate market.

Crescent, a subsidiary of Charlotte-based Duke Energy, filed for bankruptcy protection June 10, with its 30 largest unsecured creditors owed about $26.3 million. A prolific Southeast developer and builder of some of Charlotte's marquee communities, Crescent cited reduced demand and falling prices.

Two months earlier, Cynthia Furr, 45, and her daughter, McAllister, were pulling onto N.C. 49 from Riverpointe Drive when their Mercedes was struck by one of two cars that police say were racing on the highway. Witnesses estimated they were going as fast as 100 mph, authorities said, and the car that hit the Mercedes was going 83 mph on impact.

Furr and her daughter died, and Hunter Holt, a 13-year-old passenger in one of the other cars, died the next day. The alleged racers, Tyler Stasko, 20, and Carlene Atkinson, 44, each are charged with three counts of second-degree murder.

Homeowners in the Riverpointe neighborhood, which is across the road from Crescent's 1,600-acre Palisades golf-course community, have asked for a signal at the crossing since 1993, several years before the county approved the Palisades plan, said Jason Baker, a Riverpointe resident.

Before April, the area saw multiple nonfatal collisions, he said, and heavy traffic and speeding on N.C. 49 made it difficult to leave the neighborhood.

While he appreciates how quickly the city installed a temporary signal after the crash – it was operating May 22, seven weeks later – Baker said it shouldn't have taken a fatal collision to get action. Nor should Crescent have balked at paying for a signal while it encouraged people to move to the area, he said.

“They had a responsibility to make people safer,” Baker said, “and they didn't.”

Hill hinders sightline

As it curves west on its approach to Lake Wylie from Charlotte, N.C. 49 has a slight rise before the intersection with Riverpointe Drive and Grand Palisades Parkway. That hill makes it hard for vehicles entering the highway to see traffic from the east, and for westbound vehicles to see traffic coming onto the road.

In recent years, several major developments along N.C. 49 have brought new homes, stores and offices – all of which have increased traffic along the highway.

Childress Klein Properties' retail development RiverGate, about 3 miles east of Riverpointe Drive, added big-box stores such as Home Depot and a SuperTarget. Crescent's Palisades opened in 2005 and was proposed to have 2,500 homes – nearly 400 have been sold so far – plus offices and stores.

Other Crescent projects have contributed to the area's growth. On the S.C. side of Lake Wylie, 2 miles to the west, the developer in 1998 started the Landing, with 209 home lots. This past fall it opened the nearby Mill Creek Commons shopping center that includes a Lowe's home improvement store. On the N.C. side, plans for Crescent's Chapel Cove and Sanctuary neighborhoods call for 437 homes off Shopton Road West, about 3 miles north of N.C. 49.

Approved by Mecklenburg officials in December 2001, the Palisades zoning plan requires the developer to pay for a traffic signal on N.C. 49 when transportation officials “determined necessary traffic signal warrants were met,” like traffic volume and crash history.

4 lanes and small median

After N.C. 49 was widened to four lanes east of the lake in 2005, the intersection at Riverpointe Drive was redesigned to have two left turn lanes onto Grand Palisades Parkway. As a result, motorists turning left from Riverpointe Drive onto the highway had to cross four lanes and a small median – a distance of more than 50 feet without signal protection. The speed limit on N.C. 49 is 55 mph.

After an e-mail from Baker in April 2008, transportation officials blocked one turn lane until a signal could be installed. “I don't know how on earth nobody here or at the state caught this, and let the developer leave it this way, but they did,” wrote Brian Fowler, senior signal systems engineer at CDOT, in an April 2008 internal e-mail.

A month later, Putnam, the CDOT transportation manager, e-mailed Jim Medall – president of Rhein Medall Communities, which is handling residential development at the Palisades – that it was time to install a signal. Putnam cited future traffic increases from development, limited sight distance, the current intersection design and traffic speed on N.C. 49.

Putnam said the total cost would be $219,718, and that design and installation would take about 12 months. Other experts have said installing that type of signal, with metal poles and arms, can take as little as six months.

Putnam asked Medall to send a check, but Medall replied he would send Putnam's note to Phil Hayes, director of land management at Crescent, “as they are the financially responsible party for the signal improvements.”

‘A foregone conclusion'

Asking developers to pay for signals is typical with new development. Since the start of 2005, developers or builders have paid the full cost of 25 signals, a CDOT spokeswoman said. None of the payment requests was refused, she said, and they include four other signals paid for in full by Crescent.

In this case, however, Crescent wanted more evidence that a signal was necessary, dispatching an attorney to ask for information. The city, citing the support of state transportation officials, argued that the justification “was appropriate and sufficient.”

“The eventual need for the traffic signal … is a foregone conclusion,” CDOT's Fowler wrote, “and we are merely dealing with the ‘when' question.”

The two sides met in early August, when the city agreed to start designing the signal while Crescent agreed to commit in writing within 30 days to paying for the signal by March 31, 2009.

The next two months brought e-mail silence from Crescent, city records show. Putnam in October asked Hayes about the missed 30-day deadline. Subsequent e-mails from Hayes show that Crescent did not plan to pay for the signal without the sale of a retail tract at the intersection – a growing challenge in the recession.

“We are in a very grim market,” Hayes wrote in a late January e-mail to CDOT.

Despite earlier assertions that the signal was needed before the retail development – and frequently mentioning that state transportation officials agreed – CDOT accepted Hayes' blaming the recession.

“I do not think that under the economic circumstances we will be able to push this through without the sale of the property,” Putnam told a colleague in an e-mail.

‘Three tragic deaths'

As it held off payment, Crescent made no mention in the e-mail exchanges about the design of the signal as a reason for the delay. Yet after the April 4 crash at the intersection, the company said in a statement it was waiting to see the signal design before paying.

Hayes didn't return calls for this story and, through a spokesman, declined to answer questions about the payment delays. He released a statement that said the company and city and state transportation officials “had been actively working on a traffic signal” before the April 4 crash.

Hayes said transportation officials never proved that the intersection met all the “standard warrants” for a signal, which include such factors as traffic counts, pedestrian volume and history of crashes. City officials told Crescent last year that the warrants were only one consideration, and that CDOT and N.C. DOT had agreed a signal was needed.

“All three had gone above what is required of the entities,” Hayes said in the statement. “N.C. DOT agreed to initiate the signal prior to meeting its standard warrants, Crescent agreed to fund the signal prior to its meeting the state's standard warrants as called for by its zoning agreement, and the City agreed verbally to design the signal prior to payment by Crescent Resources.”

At CDOT, Liz Babson, the deputy director, told the Observer via e-mail that attorneys advised her staff against answering many of the Observer's questions because of the potential for litigation.

While e-mails show that the city clearly took the lead on the N.C. 49 signal – and that the state supported the move – Babson said the city doesn't have “the legal duty or responsibility to install traffic signals” on state roads, nor the independent legal authority to do so.

Babson also said the Palisades zoning plan required that a signal “be approved by N.C. DOT and participated in by the Petitioner.” Those notes don't clearly say the developer must pay the full signal cost, Babson wrote.

“The City was never in a strong position to insist that the developer pay 100 percent of the costs at a time dictated by the City, or to expect that the City could force such a position through an enforcement action,” she wrote.

“This response should not be read to trivialize the three tragic deaths,” Babson added. “ … However, the search for ‘blame' should not be misdirected. Although yet to be proven in a court of law, it appears that these deaths were caused solely by the reckless actions of two individuals.”

Loud crash, sinking feeling

After hearing in August about the agreement between the city and Crescent, Baker praised transportation officials, and even offered to take one to lunch at Zen Asian Fusion in Dilworth. As months passed, however, he asked CDOT for updates, including a March 13 e-mail expressing concern about the “dangerous” intersection.

“No fatalities yet,” he wrote, “but this seems inevitable without a light.”

Three weeks later, the deadly crash happened.

Baker and his 2-year-old daughter were at a neighbor's house when they heard of the crash, which led him to wonder “which one of my neighbors just died.”

At the intersection now, shiny new signal lamps hang from cables stretched between wooden poles rising from each corner – a temporary fix until the metal poles and arms are installed next year. When driving west on N.C. 49 toward the intersection – the path of the alleged street racers on April 4 – the lights are visible from at least a few hundred yards away.

While Baker believes the signal would have prevented the three deaths, he realizes there's no way to know for sure. Still, he said, a signal would have removed a crucial what-if question.

“I wish we weren't here saying they should have done more,” he said.

Adam Bell contributed

[There were numerous reader comments posted.]