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VA CLINIC TOUGH TO FIND WITHOUT SIGNS --
Veterans
are left searching for a building hidden from
view
by a hillside and dense foliage.
Story here...
http://www.newsobserver
.com/news/story/674790.html
Story below:
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VA clinic tough to find without signs
Jesse James DeConto, Staff Writer
RALEIGH - World War II veteran Herbert Reichlin
spent an hour one day trying to find the Veterans Affairs Outpatient
Clinic near WakeMed.
Directions given to Reichlin and posted on the VA Web site tell drivers
to take New Bern Avenue to Sunnybrook Road. The trouble is, neither
street has a sign that points to the VA clinic.
"Why aren't there signs?" Reichlin wrote in a recent letter to the
editor, after his trip home took less than half the time it took to find
the clinic.
Jim Galkowski, associate chief of ambulatory care at the VA hospital in
Durham, said he and his predecessors have tried for two years to have
signs erected on Interstate 440, New Bern Avenue, and Poole and
Sunnybrook roads.
But the highway and roads are off limits because the N.C. Depart-ment of
Transportation allows signs only for hospitals with trauma centers on
the roads it maintains.
In May, after the VA's correspondence with the transportation department
and other complaints about the sign policy, state traffic engineer Kevin
Lacy decided that each division could consider signs for speciality
medical clinics on noncontrolled access roads such as New Bern and
Poole.
"[The VA] maybe should send a letter to the division engineer, and
perhaps we'll investigate it again and see what we can do to accommodate
them," said Frank Carpenter, assistant division traffic engineer for the
Raleigh area.
The city of Raleigh, which regulates signs on Sunnybrook Road, allows
one sign per establishment. The outpatient clinic already has a sign
near its entrance on Sungate Boulevard, so the VA can't put another sign
along Sunnybrook, even on its own property.
Faye Allen, the city's zoning specialist in charge of signs, did not
return repeated calls for comment.
"We have the sign sitting in our shop," said Galkowski. "I could have
put it up in half an hour."
The VA even enlisted the help of U.S. Rep. Brad Miller, to no avail. So
patients such as Reichlin, who have grown in number from 3,738 to 4,355
since last summer, are left searching for a building hidden from view by
a hillside and dense foliage.
"You don't see it as you're driving up and down Sunnybrook," Galkowski
said. "Only if you kind of crane your neck 170 degrees as you're driving
by can you see the building."
Staff writer Jesse James DeConto can be reached at 932-8760 or
jesse.deconto@newsobserver.com.
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Larry Scott --
