In the past couple of years, there has been a back and forth between the residents of the Rockshire neighborhood and the corporation that owns the Rockshire parking lot. Neighborhood residents want the lot to be used for restaurants or stores. The corporation wants to build 122 new townhouses in that area. This is a horrible idea.

Adding 122 townhouses would cause unreasonable traffic on Wootton Parkway and Hurley Avenue. In the mornings, especially on school days, there is bumper-to-bumper traffic every single day. Some people cut through the parking lot in order to alleviate traffic on Wootton Parkway. If more houses are built in the lot, the traffic, which is already bad enough, will increase dramatically, and make it almost impossible for people to drive on Wootton Parkway. “The amount of traffic in the neighborhood is already ridiculous, adding all those houses would make it so much and that would be bad for the community,” junior Natalie Azarsa said.

In addition to horrible traffic, this would cause an issue for parking at the Rockshire Pool. During the summertime, a lot of people use the lot to park: for example, lifeguards, local residents who drive to the pool, and, anytime there is a home meet, the opposing team. This would create an issue because those parking spots that are there now would be dedicated to the homeowners, not guests. “Adding these houses would really negatively affect our swim team and the number of people that would regularly come to the pool. If they take away the parking, it would discourage people to come to the pool because they would have to park farther away from the pool,” member of the swim team and junior Jordan Kelly said.

Another issue with the housing is that it would overpopulate schools and could potentially affect zoning. This is a safe community with great schools. Because of this, if houses were built it would attract a ton of families to move into them. These people would be zoned to go to schools like Fallsmead Elementary School, Lakewood Elementary School, Robert Frost Middle School, and Wootton. Our school and Frost are already borderline overpopulated, so this would cause a big problem. “Adding houses would make schools way more crowded and uncomfortable, something that I don’t want to happen. Hopefully, the community can keep pushing and fighting so that the townhouses are not built,” junior Ethan Kuan said.

Adding restaurants, stores or shops would be much smarter and it would benefit the people who live in and around the community. It would also generate a lot of business, which would make money for the company that owns the lot. This is a win-win situation for both the members of the community and the corporation. “I miss when there used to be a Giant there. My friends and I could walk over anytime we wanted and get food. I hope instead of building houses they choose to add stores or a coup of restaurants,” junior Nick Kim said.