mmilliken@heraldsun.com; 419-6684
DURHAM -- Some residents in the Treyburn development are providing a counterpoint to the alarms over a proposed school and park that have been sounded by Snow Hill Road homeowners.
"Everybody I've spoken to in Treyburn is for the middle school," said Dina Griggs, a real estate agent who lives and has sold homes in the Treyburn neighborhood. The development is north of the proposed school location.
"I think the consensus in Treyburn is that we want the middle school very much," said Susan Ruffini, a Treyburn homemaker and friend of Griggs' who was interviewed by phone while the two were driving back from a golf outing this week.
Neither woman shared the concerns of Snow Hill Road residents who would be most directly affected by the traffic the school would bring. They said they had not had direct contact with critics of the middle school, which would share its athletic fields with an adjoining city park.
"You already have buses traveling there to get to Little River Elementary," Griggs said, referring to an extant school off Snow Hill, "and I think having the schools close together ... should be beneficial."
Griggs said some would-be homebuyers perceive Treyburn as being too distant. She believes having a new middle school within walking distance of the development would boost home values. That's especially so given the poor reputation that Chewning Middle seems to have in Griggs' circles.
At least nine e-mails ostensibly written by Treyburn residents in support of the proposed middle school were sent last month to local government officials, who control zoning for the site. Griggs was among them, as was Ernie Swanson, president of the Treyburn homeowners' association.
Swanson said his support was purely a personal matter and otherwise declined to speak on the record. However, an e-mail that apparently excerpted a Treyburn homeowners' association newsletter said that the Snow Hill site "seems to make the most economic sense" and "should have a positive impact on real estate sales and values."
