Residents of Manchester, Conn., were startled six years ago when they learned that a highway interchange proposed for Interstate 84 would munch up 50 acres of greenery that had been zoned for recreation near the center of town. The highway construction, the townspeople complained, would destroy three baseball diamonds, a football field, and a small playground and would take up space allotted for future recreational developments.
Rather than give in to the concrete invasion, as most other towns have done, Manchesterites reached a compromise with the contractors and the state highway department. The interchange would be built in the town as planned, but Manchester would still be able to keep its recreational facilities. How? By using valuable land that highway engineers have in the past largely ignored.
Interchange City. Under the compromise plan, the interchange was designed so that Manchester’s existing recreational facilities could be preserved within the “cloverleaf”—the network of curving ramps that connects the intersecting highways. Furthermore, additional facilities could be built with the $263,275 the town received from the government as payment for the interchange land. The state highway department also agreed to design underpasses through which pedestrians could stroll from one land area to another.
The contractors have already graded the earth inside one section of the cloverleaf for a new track and football field for the junior high school. When the cloverleaf recreational complex is completed, it will resemble a kind of interchange city. A 15-acre area will include an ice-skating rink, a recreation center, outdoor tennis and basketball courts, a playground, and fields for baseball, softball and football. Another seven acres are set aside for high school football and baseball. The remainder of the interchange will be turned into a 25-acre woodland with hiking trails and picnic tables. Five miles of underground electrical conduits will make it possible to install lighting anywhere in the cloverleaf.
Meanwhile, planners hope that when I-84 is finally opened to traffic in 1976, Detroit will have reduced auto emissions enough to allow an outfielder playing on the interchange diamond to chase a fly ball without getting lost in the smog.
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