Church St. to reopen Friday

The closed portion of South Church Street from Cedar Street  to Luter Drive is scheduled to reopen to traffic on Friday, May 18 around 3 p.m. At that point, the paving, striping, crosswalks and brick sidewalks should be completed, said Director of Planning, Engineering and Public Works Bill Hopkins. Landscaping will not be completed and VDOT will still have to finish work on the streetlights, he added, "but the most important thing is t get the detour open and traffic to flow. If you walk down there, it really looks good."

Harbor Towne Drive in Eagle Harbor is one of many streets in Isle of Wight County that experienced a great-than-average drop in housing values.

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News editor

Loretta Daniel wants to sell her house and move but now has second thoughts.

“I don’t want to give it away,” Daniel said of her five-bedroom house located in Eagle Harbor.

Daniel recently learned that the value of her house dropped 20 percent in value, as it did for most of her neighbors on Harbor Towne Drive, according to Isle of Wight County’s 2012 reassessment.

While housing values dropped an average of six percent overall in the county, some neighborhoods took a bigger hit — including Eagle Harbor.

For many residents of Harbor Towne Drive, the recent reassessment valued their homes less than what they paid for them in 2003-05.

So far, Daniel is faring a bit better. Daniel bought her house in 2004 for $266,694. It was assessed two years ago for $344,700. This year, the value dropped to $272,300.

“I just hope it picks up,” Daniel said of the housing market.

Harbor Towne Drive is lined with large, two-story houses and well-manicured lawns. Children played basketball, made water balloons and rode skateboards in their yards and along the sidewalk Saturday of the large subdivision off Route 17 in Carrollton.

There’s a “for sale” sign in the yard of 22441 Harbor Towne Drive. It’s currently priced within $12,000 of 2010 assessed value of $387,200, but the most recent assessment came in at $308,500.

Owner Yun Dae Hee’s sister shook her head in disbelief at the difference between what her brother paid for the house in 2005 — $419,900 — and the most recent assessment.... (Subscribe!)

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News editor

A Bowie knife and two guns were just a few of the items recovered recently in the ongoing investigation into the double murder in Carrsville.

The Bowie knife, with a handle large enough to cause blunt force trauma, was found in a red 2001 Honda Accord driven by Joseph “Jay” Joyner Jr. of the 20000 block of Darden’s Point Road in Courtland, according to search warrant filed by the Isle of Wight County Sheriff’s Office and the Virginia State Police.

Joyner Jr., 37, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of his father and stepmother, Joe and Sandra Joyner, who lived along Walters Highway in Carrville.

Sandra, 58, was found dead in her home April 27, the victim of severe head trauma by a blunt object. Joyner Sr., 62, was found in the woods near the house later that evening, dead from a gunshot wound to the back of the head and covered with pine straw, according to a search warrant filed by the Virginia State Police.

Joyner Jr., 37, was stopped by the Currituck County, N.C. Sheriff’s deputies while driving the Honda immediately after Joyner Sr. was found murdered in the woods. Inside the car, deputies spotted a single spent shotgun shell and a cap with blood on the rim — along with the Bowie knife.

Recovered from the house on Walter’s Highway was a .22 caliber long rifle, eight 22-caliber cartridges, a Mossberg 20 gauge shotgun, a bag of financial papers, a partial turkey call and a dell computer, among other items....(Subscribe!)

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Staff writer 

Using an on-the-spot recycling method, construction crews are taking deteriorated asphalt on Route 17 and transforming it almost instantly into a new base for the road.

VDOT’s 4.8-mile Cold-in-Place Paving Project covers all four lanes of Route 17 from the James River Bridge to the Crittenden Bridge. The $5.3 million project is set to end June 2013.

Most of the paving work should be finished by this June, but crews will still work on crossovers and tie-ins at junctions with businesses and subdivisions as well as rumble strips and guardrails, said Project Manager James Poff.

In the cold-in-place paving process, one or two “recyclers,” also known as “reclaimers,” mill, stabilize and replace the asphalt in a single pass.

The “cold” part of cold-in-place, which uses ambient air, distinguishes the process from another method that uses hotter temperatures, said Poff.

“The [recycler] we have is approximately 15-feet wide, and that large of a machine, I’ve been told, there’s only a couple in the United States,” Poff said.

To make the new base asphalt layer, crews remove five inches of existing asphalt, combine the old materials with an oil-based emulsion and lay the new mixture back on the same section of road.

“It’s like making a cake out there,” Poff said.

After the base is laid, they follow up with an intermediate layer and then a top layer. With the traditional method, the old road materials are trucked out and disposed of while new materials are brought in.

Switching to this new method saves time, money and the environment, said Poff....(Subscribe!)

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News editor

More than a half million dollars in proposed cuts were made to the cost of a new Isle of Wight rescue squad building during a May 9 building and grounds committee meeting.

Cost savings include eliminating façade embellishments, using cinderblock rather than brick for the exterior and deleting the arches from the bay doors. Other savings were made in site improvements, according to information provided by Powell Management Associates.

The budget for the project is $5.4 million, and county officials are working off the same plans used to build the Smithfield Volunteer Fire Department — with some modifications.

Eliminating the extras on the façade, such as the tower and portico, easily saves $100,000, said Chris Rea, architect with Moseley Architects.

“As long as we’re under $5.4 [million] or less we’re OK,” said Board of Supervisors Chairman Al Casteen.

Newport Supervisor Buzz Bailey said the Board of Supervisors “put up a firestorm” by voting to build a new building, so he was especially interested in any cuts that could be made but still serve the needs of the rescue volunteers....(Subscribe!)