Artist rendering.
Posted on 12/07/2002 5:55:22 AM PST by csvset
State plans to build $7 million toilet
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| The New Kent Rest Area will be an 11,000-square-foot facility, built in colonial style with an array of comforts including 40 toilets. Artist rendering. |
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By BILL BURKE, The Virginian-Pilot
© December 7, 2002
The state's roadbuilding program may be in the toilet, but that's not stopping the folks who run it from erecting a latrine fit for a queen.
Or a governor, at least.
It's not much to look at now -- just a big clearing to your right at Mile Marker 213 on Interstate 64 as you motor east through New Kent County.
But by late next summer, wayfarers will be greeted by a shimmering citadel of sanitary necessity, with 30 porcelain thrones for the ladies and 10 for the men.
At 11,000 square feet, with a $7 million price tag, it will be the most palatial lavatory in this part of the commonwealth. In fact, it will bear more than a passing resemblance to the historic Governor's Palace down the highway in Colonial Williamsburg.
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Same central structure of colonial brick with tall, elegant windows. Same trapezoid-shaped hip roof. Same domed cupola, sprouting skyward. Same matching wings, left and right, with brick chimneys as the dominant feature.
The rest area's architect, Delmar Dayton of Richmond, admits the two buildings are ``similar in broad architectural terms,'' though he says the Governor's Palace was not his inspiration for the rest area.
Among Virginia's 41 state-run rest areas, only an $8.1 million, 16,000-square-foot facility on I-85 in Mecklenburg County near the North Carolina border, which opened earlier this year, is grander.
But that's more than just a rest stop. It's also a welcome center for visitors entering Virginia from the south. And it was funded before the Virginia Department of Transportation, staggered by an unprecedented budget crisis, was forced to slash $2.8 billion from its six-year highway plan.
The Commonwealth Transportation Board, which tells VDOT how it can spend taxpayer dollars, awarded the contract to design and build the New Kent rest area last June. That was the same month the board voted to eliminate 166 roadbuilding projects from the six-year plan, including several in Hampton Roads, among them the widening of I-64 in Chesapeake from Interstate 464 to Bowers Hill.
The rest area was approved at a time when VDOT was so strapped for cash it had asked contractors to voluntarily suspend some three-dozen highway projects to balance its books and had to allocate $142 million from its road construction program to fix potholes and pay for other maintenance work.
Some VDOT critics wonder why the transportation agency is spending so much money on opulent sanitary accommodations when it is having a hard time paying for new roads.
``Until VDOT can get it's act together, why give them $7 million'' to build a new rest area, said Sanford Pankin of Hampton. ``Would you give Enron more money?''
Pankin, a leader of a grass-roots coalition that helped defeat a referendum last month that would have raised taxes to fund local highway projects, is convinced the public's lack of confidence in VDOT was a factor in the initiative's defeat. He said the agency has for years been plagued by ineptitude and mismanagement. VDOT's new commissioner, Philip A. Shucet, has begun an aggressive reform of the agency he inherited.
Pankin is not sure VDOT should be in the business of funding rest areas at all.
``Let them privatize them, like they do in the Northeast,'' he said. ``Maybe they could make money.''
As for the rest area's $7 million cost, here's some perspective: Of the 529 construction and maintenance contracts awarded by VDOT last year, only 21 carried higher price tags.
When the budget-cutters began lopping projects from VDOT's master plan, the New Kent comfort station was the only one to survive, said Cyndi Ward, the VDOT official in charge of the agency's rest areas.
Compared to the cramped 2,300-square-foot eastbound way stop on the other side of I-64, it will be downright sumptuous, featuring an enclosed vending center with tables, space for a State Police office, fiber-optic cable, a multi-use restroom, a computer room and an enclosed lobby containing travel and tourism information.
In fact, Ward said it will be the ``footprint'' for Virginia's future rest areas _ if and when VDOT finds the cash to build them. And for the record, the new generation of rest areas will be called ``safety rest and information centers.''
Ward envisions such futuristic rest areas as ``safe havens,'' places where people can seek refuge in emergencies and during evacuations.
Ward said the New Kent center survived the budget-cutters' axe because it's one of the busiest in Virginia -- handling even more visitors than the westbound station, she said -- and the only state rest area for travelers exiting I-295 onto I-64 east headed for Hampton Roads.
VDOT officials had planned to raze and rebuild the westbound rest area in similar fashion, but that was before the agency's six-year plan underwent major surgery.
Modest though it may be, the westbound station reopened for business in September after being closed for nearly a year and a half. It had to be shut down when its sewage recycling system began to fail, said Robert Prezioso, VDOT's resident engineer for New Kent County.
``With the volume we were doing, the system couldn't keep up with the ammonia smell,'' Prezioso said.
Unforeseen problems caused delays in reopening the rest area, Prezioso and Ward said.
Work crews tried to link water and sewer lines from the westbound rest stop to New Kent County pipes on the opposite side of the highway, near the Colonial Downs race track. That involved digging beneath the interstate.
But they were stumped. Literally.
The workers who built the interstate decades ago had buried trees and tree stumps under the roadbed, Prezioso said. They posed an impenetrable barrier for crews trying to install sewer and water pipes. The problems caused months of additional delays and hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional costs.
And made life miserable for Ward.
As motorists passed the rest area month after month, they wanted to know why it remained closed. Seeing no evidence of work in progress, they fumed, and cursed VDOT.
But they couldn't see the frustrated contractors, or the buried stumps, Ward said.
But the biggest problem may have been a miscalculation by the engineers who designed the sewage system, which was built in 1976.
They grossly underestimated how many flushes the future held.
The system was built to accommodate 1,000 flushes a day. But by the 21st century, on summer days, the septic system had to meet the needs of 1,000 flushes per hour. And it couldn't keep up.
``We never, ever could have imagined the traffic volumes we've reached,'' Ward said.
The new eastbound rest area will be connected to New Kent County's water and sewer lines, so there will be no closed sewage system susceptible to premature failure.
Architect Dayton said VDOT's only requirement for the new center was that it be designed in ``traditional Virginia style, colonial style.'' Dayton's firm, Dayton, Thompson & Associates, also drew up the plans for the I-85 rest area/welcome center and included many of the same design features as the New Kent facility.
For the New Kent rest area, the colonial motif will be especially appropriate in 2007, when the the state celebrates the 400th anniversary of the first permanent settlement in North America at Jamestown. The center will be located a short drive from exits to Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg.
``The Jamestown celebration was one factor'' in the decision to build the facility at New Kent at the expense of other planned rest areas, Ward said. ``This could be a focal point'' for visitors approaching Jamestown, she noted.
The state hopes to reap an economic windfall from the 2007 celebration. The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation is spending more than $83 million on improvements for the event, which will draw all manner of dignitaries, including, it is hoped, royalty.
Reach Bill Burke at 446-2589 or bburke@pilotonline.com
Now there is an idea.
Virginia's older rest stops are rather shabby and are ill equipped to handle the patronage.
This is a new one to me, and I am not certain that public money should be spent on multi-use restrooms.
Sounds like a seat of perversion to me...
I'm not sure what that entails exactly.
The wife thinks it may mean that they'll include diaper changing stations.
What people forget is that the Interstate highway system is a MILITARY highway.
Rest areas, grades, interchanges, and highway design are all mandated by the national defense requirements.
Look on your maps and you will find very few stretches of road that don't have rest areas or at least pull overs longer than 50 miles. Some military vehicles in the 50's and 60's had a range of 50 miles before refueling.
Another glance at the maps will reveal that the highways go from military post to military post, with interstate interchanges within 5 miles of the gates. This is not a coincidence.
Sure, a $7 million facility is extravagant, but an Army on the move is going to need every one of them.
From About.com:
http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa052499.htm
At the end of World War II, General Dwight David Eisenhower surveyed the war damage to Germany and was impressed by the durability of the Autobahn. While a single bomb could make a train route useless, Germany's wide and modern highways could often be used immediately after being bombed because it was difficult to destroy such a wide swath of concrete or asphalt.
In the 1950s, America was frightened of nuclear attack by the Soviet Union (people were even building bomb shelters at home). It was thought that a modern interstate highway system could provide citizens with evacuation routes from the cities and would also allow the rapid movement of military equipment across the country.
Although Alaska has no Interstate Highways, Hawaii does. On the island of Oahu are the Interstates H1, H2, and H3 which connect important military facilities on the island.
Library was probably built on a public street with power, water, and sewer within 660', probably even 50'.
The 11000 SF area seems a bit excessive. Then again 1000 flushes an hour reads like a lot of sh*t to me. :^)
I hope my language isn't offensive,...I studied to become an ABRASIVE Engineer, but settled to become a DAM Engineer in the future.
What states do these "Interstates" connect?
Should they not be designated as "Intrastate" highways?
I do remember the regs that every so many miles of the interstate system there has to be a one mile straight area to allow landings of military planes.
"Rest stop." "Toilet."
These palaces of putrification deserve a more apt name. How 'bout....
Clinton Libraries?
I believe it a restroom for the family. Mom and dad with a couple of little ones. They have a couple of toilets and wash areas for the whole family in private.
The mall in town has one. Not a bad idea.
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