Some Pasadena residents don't support extending Strawberry Road

 
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Project was not on council agenda; opposition stirs
 
Pasadena's planned extension of Strawberry Road continues to draw opposition from some affected residents and at least one City Council member.

On Tuesday, Ruth Caskey of the 1200 block of Scott Street told the Pasadena City Council that she doesn't want to lose her home of 58 years.

"I'm getting very old and I don't think I could stand to move," said the 84-year-old widow who has been battling cancer for four years.

Under a plan the city has developed, Strawberry would be extended northward along the east side of Little Vince Bayou to intersect with Pasadena Boulevard at Park Lane, just north of Jackson. If completed, the project will take 33 houses on the west side of Scott, between Harris and Jackson. About a dozen businesses on Pasadena Boulevard also would lose some portion of their property, according to the plan.

Construction isn't scheduled to begin until 2007, but land acquisition is expected to begin this year, according to the city's Capital Improvement Plan.

The goal is to create a major north-south corridor through central Pasadena, a need that was identified in the mid-1990s, according to project engineers with Sparks-Barlow-Barnett Inc.

Councilman Jack Douglass, who earlier supported the project, has joined those who see the Strawberry extension as a bad idea.

"I don't think it should be done," Douglass said during council members' comments at the end of Tuesday's meeting. "It's going to displace a whole lot of people and will cause a bottleneck between Jackson and Park. We're going to spend multiple millions of dollars to widen Pasadena Boulevard to six lanes, and I don't see the need to extend Strawberry."

Sophia Garza, who lives in the 1100 block of Richard Street, would not lose her home, but told the council that extending Strawberry would create more traffic and noise and would pose a safety hazard.

"Why not apply that money to other things?" Garza asked the council through an interpreter. "The sidewalks on Richard are very bad."

The council's agenda Tuesday did not include any item related to the Strawberry extension, but last week at a meeting of the Second Century Corp., the board allocated $500,000 to the city to begin acquiring right of way for the project. Second Century Corp. is the city's economic development entity funded through a half-cent sales tax.
Douglass also spoke against the Strawberry extension at the Second Century meeting, but said Tuesday that he thought his comments "fell on deaf ears."