Historic Lewes, a small community on the shores of the Delaware Bay...First Town...First State! Everybody wants a part of that. It sounds and looks good!
I am a native Delawarean who has lived in Lewes since 1986. I have enjoyed raising my children here. I live on New Road and my home is exactly 35 feet from the road. I am an expert on what goes on there every day, in every season. New Road now is a major thoroughfare, even though DelDOT says “New Road is under used.”
Recently New Road has been under the microscope - for lots of reasons:
• It’s one of the three corridors in and out of town
• It provides solo access to the largest rural acreage left in or near Lewes for possible development, for what - more houses, townhouses, cars, people, taxes and congestion
• Parts of the land are adjacent to the city limits and could therefore be annexed
• The city of Lewes wants to annex some of this land, and hopefully more
• The bridge at Canary Creek is under water during storms.
Does anyone think we have enough people, cars and congestion? Driving east on New Road you can go only one place - Pilottown Road - dead end! Driving west, do we want bumper-to-bumper traffic backups from Pilottown Road to Route 1?
The beauty of Lewes has been its simplicity, diversity and small-town qualities.
How can we, the people of Lewes, preserve the last major open land on the east side of Route 1? Growth doesn’t have to be ugly, greedy or excessive.
The owners of the land are entitled to sell or do what they want with it. They own it; it’s worth a lot of money. The developers are entitled to develop - they do it for money. They want to maximize their take, I get it!!
Maybe there could be a compromise on the numbers, on the density per acre so less density and more open spaces could result.
New Road is still a rural and green country road. Ten years ago, the GLF Future Scan survey asked if local citizens would pay more in taxes to preserve open space. The results were overwhelmingly yes! The report was presented to local and county officials. What happened to that idea? There went the Fourth Street forest! How can we get around this excessive depletion of our open spaces? Lewes is disappearing. We all live here to get away from what now is being allowed to happen by city and county officials.
Lewes may quickly become less attractive and looking like any other town.
One thousand new houses on New Road, maybe 2,000 cars - all trying to get into our little community or bogging down on the three roads leading from Lewes to Route 1. New Road can’t handle that. It would require widening, new entrances, a shoulder and a high new bridge at Canary Creek. There goes rural and green, and we have a new highway in Lewes. Sounds terrible!
Regarding the current Brittingham property’s proposed townhouses, there are no townhouses on New Road. County zoning allows two families per acre on the 30 acres. Now the city is suggesting 90 townhouses allowing six families per acre as an incentive to annex. It sounds ugly to me. How many cars is that?
I would hope the Lewes City Council and Sussex County Council will rethink their approaches regarding development of New Road, our last greenway in Lewes.
Think it over - I’d like to think that the people still have a say.
Bruce Chandler
Lewes
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