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Why Some Towns Place Roadblocks on Cul-de-Sacs -New York Times 12/17/2007 01:07 PM fight for them. Just a 25-mile drive north from Northfield, the cul-de-sac is quite welcome in the Twin Cities suburb of Eagan. By 2005, the number had grown to more than 65o in the community of b9,ooo residents, from about ioo in the late i9~o's when the population was about i~,ooo. But in 2004, residents of Wellington Way were dismayed when they learned that their flat-ended cul-de- sac would become a through street as the adjacent Diamond T Ranch, a horse ranch, is developed into a residential subdivision called Steeplechase of Eagan. They petitioned the city to keep their cul-de-sac, but the Dakota County Plat Commission insisted that the cul-de-sac, which had been planned for a through street as far back as 1985, be extended. Residents argued that when they bought their homes nothing indicated that the street would ever be anything but a dead end. Eagan officials sided with the residents, and the plan, which was also disputed because of wetlands use and density, went back and forth between the city and the county for a year before the city finally relented. Since then, Eagan has posted signs on about 4o cul-de-sacs saying "Future Through Street." "They have been very highly regarded in Eagan, and there has never been any issue about getting rid of them or taking them out of our design standards," said Thomas L. Hedges, city administrator in Eagan and a cul-de-sac resident. Brent D. Ryan, associate professor of urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago and co- director of the City Design Center, grew up on a cul-de-sac in Branford, Conn. He noted that by about i96o, cul-de-sacs became the favored street pattern, and in many places the street grid was discouraged or forbidden. "Now we're creating new sets of standards that either permit or require gridded street systems again," he said. "The thing you can say most about cul-de-sacs," he added, "is what goes around comes around." Coovriaht 2006 The New York Tim ¢ Cmm~anv Privacy Policy ~ Search ~ rr i n ~ Xt+~Yt_ ~ Helo ~ Contact Us ~ yyork for Us ~ i M http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27Jreatestate/27nati.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin Page 3 of 3