Proposed road would push family out of longtime home

MORRISVILLE -- Just outside the modest ranch home that Esther and Troy Dunnegan built 30 years ago, the nail-gun pops of a work crew added to the skeleton of another new home this month. In recent years, the sounds of new home construction signaled the shrinking of farmland that dated back more than 90 years in Esther Dunnegan's family before they sold chunks of it to developers

Now, a new road and a new stream of traffic threaten to crowd out the Dunnegans altogether from this remnant of Shiloh, formerly a rural community of black farmers. The state's plans for construction of a Triangle Parkway toll road include reconnecting the Dunnegans' stretch of Kit Creek Road to another segment across Davis Drive, where Cisco and other Research Triangle Park companies employ thousands.

The proposed path for that reconnection, which would link residents in the new Kitts Creek subdivision neighboring the Dunnegans to RTP, would cut through their home. Esther Dunnegan says she and her husband have no desire to move.

"This property has been in the family for six generations. To me, that has a lot of meaning," said Dunnegan, an education specialist with the state Department of Public Instruction and a member of Morrisville's planning board.

Her father had her helping drive the tractor by age 5, and she remembers how she and her four sisters used to wake up at 4 a.m. to take the tobacco out of the barn. Now her farm work is limited to a small garden she tends a few nights a week after work. Dunnegan's 87-year-old mother still lives across the road from her and soon will move into a new three-story home being completed on a neighboring Kitts Creek lot. Two of Esther Dunnegan's sisters also live down the road.

The family used to own close to 100 acres, but its holdings have been whittled down to about half that size, with much of the sold-off farmland converted into fields of new homes.

To a small degree, Dunnegan acknowledges the irony of the threat posed to her home by a road meant to serve new residents living on land the family sold for development. But some of her new neighbors also were concerned initially; a Turnpike Authority traffic projection estimated that the reconnection would would lead to as many as 20,000 cars passing daily through the Kitts Creek neighborhood by 2030.

The developers of the Kitts Creek subdivision have touted its compact rows of cottages, Georgians, Craftsmans and other new homes as a pedestrian-friendly, "neo-traditional" community. Just a block or two away from Dunnegan's small garden, a community swimming pool and playground split the opposing lanes of 25 mph traffic through blocks of Kitts Creek custom-built homes.

"No developers in their right mind would have done all this with the intent of reconnecting that road for 20,000 cars a day," she said.

Many of the Kitts Creek residents were lured by the proximity to the airport or jobs in RTP. The earlier traffic study indicating that a flood of cars could motor through the reconnected road fueled some of their own early concerns, Kitts Creek resident Stefanie Reed said. But the announced closings of several intersections outside the neighborhood have lessened fears that RTP commuters would use their stretch of Kit Creek Road as a cut-through route, she said.

"Now there are more people leaning toward the reconnect," said Reed, 36, who serves on Morrisville's land use and transportation committee. "I think a lot of the residents here sympathize with Esther, but it doesn't affect most of us. They designed this neighborhood knowing the expressway was going to be built."

Kit Creek Road was initially disconnected during the construction of N.C. 540, and in recent years, Morrisville town officials kept in contact with the state Department of Transportation to ensure that it would be reconnected.

The town has suggested that the Dunnegans' home could be saved if the new stretch of road was designed to accommodate a slower posted speed limit of 25 mph. That would enable designers to curve the road while "minimizing impacts to the Dunnegan property," according to Tim Gauss, Morrisville's director of development services.

The Morrisville planning department has proposed the Dunnegans, town staff and state Turnpike Authority officials meet to try to reach a compromise. Jennifer Harris, a Turnpike Authority project engineer, said last month there may be a way to accommodate the Dunnegans.

"The design just has not progressed enough at this point to reflect that," Harris said.

In the quiet of her own home, Dunnegan said the town proposal to slow down the proposed road's design speed to curve it around their home may work.

"I'm not going to say it's going to be good, but it's better," she said. "We feel very comfortable in this house. We did not build it with the intention of moving out as seniors."