I don’t think Henry David Thoreau would appreciate the use of his words, incorrectly quoted by the way, in recent developer ads in the Cape Gazette for a new community called Walden. Thoreau’s Walden, his masterpiece of 1854, was about simplicity, contemplation, solitude. What is being built on Route 24, at the crossroads of Sloane and Hollymount, is anything but.
The misquotes “live the life you imagined” and “go confidently in the direction of your dreams,” while nice sentiments to entice new residents to Sussex County, just do not describe what awaits newcomers. The life we have here now is full of traffic, and in the words of Joni Mitchell, circa 1970, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” While Walden is not a parking lot, it is a community of like-type homes, some condos, most huge. Only a relatively few homes will be on Burton’s Pond; so much for direct access as claimed in the ads. And one day Route 24 will be a parking lot as it will be full of cars going nowhere fast. Mitchell also wrote “you don’t know what you got til it’s gone.” Those of us in the Angola area know all too well what we have lost.
The problem is not the people moving here or the farmer who sold property or even the developer who took advantage of what was there for the taking. County officials who over the last 10 years have approved one community after another without road infrastructure in place, those are the people responsible for overdevelopment. If you approve one development after another on two-lane roads heading to an incredibly popular resort, would you not think there would be a problem one day with traffic? I don’t mean slow traffic, I mean gridlock. Should Sussex Planning and Zoning Commission members be elected? As appointed members, who are they responsible to?
DelDOT project planners, in a recent webinar, said one reason there are no plans to widen Route 24 past Mulberry was that 20 years ago no one wanted that! What have they been looking at in the past 10 years of steady growth? The misconnect between the county and the state is obvious when it comes to our road system. It is time for a moratorium on all applications for new residential developments and on applications for zoning changes!
Thoreau actually wrote, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with unexpected success in common hours.” So to the newcomers to Sussex County, welcome, but beware. Thoreau felt society pressed you to live in big houses; he learned that small ones would serve you better and allow more time to enjoy the simple things in life, a good book, a healthy walk. I do not think Thoreau would approve his book sentiments being used to sell this new Walden lifestyle. Maybe our Sussex newcomers will find some solitude in the middle of Burton’s Pond but the sounds and smells of cars will be oh so close by. That lovely body of water will soon lose its charm. Oh, did I forget to mention the crosswalks? This Walden has more than one!
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