Suffolk in denial on CenterPoint project

The microscopic chance that you'll win the lottery might be worth wasting the occasional dollar on a ticket. But it's a terrible way of preparing for the future.

Suffolk's Planning Commission last week approved a huge warehouse complex that will add enormous amounts of truck traffic to an overburdened road, essentially betting part of the city's future on winning the lottery for scarce highway money.

If that bet is wrong, Suffolk citizens will face either crippling traffic on the west side of town or a bill that might amount to $1,300 for every man, woman and child in the city.

Either is far too high a price to pay for progress, and too backward to represent smart growth in a city that needs some.

Illinois-based CenterPoint Properties wants to build a $350 million, 5.8-million-square-foot distribution complex on 900 acres off U.S. 58 near Lakeland High School. The project would provide thousands of jobs, not to mention capacity for the port.

The trucks that would pick up and drop off cargo at CenterPoint need a ribbon of asphalt they can use to escape. U.S. 58 - also called Holland Road - is that ribbon. But within walking distance of CenterPoint's property, U.S. 58 is a crowded local road, packed with slow-moving cars carrying people trying to get to and from home, stores, gas stations and fast-food joints.

The road is, in every sense of the word, a mess.

Without CenterPoint, U.S. 58 needs to be widened or bypassed, a project that will likely cost at least $100 million. (The company argues that widening U.S. 58 from four to six lanes would cost just $54.9 million, $40 million less than the estimate by the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, an agency that makes such calculations for a living.)

Company officials and supporters have said that the cost of the road could be paid by the state - which is trying to fill a $3 billion hole in its budget - or in a stimulus package proposed by the Obama administration, which isn't in office yet.

If those sources don't pan out, the city would have to pay for the project itself, an unprecedented and prohibitively expensive usurpation of state and federal responsibility.

Even so, the city is already laying the groundwork to pay to improve a federal highway, an expenditure so massive that it would distort spending on schools and other roads that need attention more.

If, somehow, the state or the feds come up with money for highways, U.S. 58 wouldn't be anywhere near the top of the list of necessary projects in Hampton Roads. The idea - proffered by both the company and city officials - that making the road worse to create urgency for highway funding is the height of folly, perhaps one more sign that the precepts of smart growth have been entirely abandoned in Suffolk.

Next is a vote by the City Council in January. If it OKs the project, Suffolk will soon desperately need a whole bunch of money from Washington, Richmond or the pockets of local taxpayers. Or, perhaps, from a lottery ticket.