Freeway's foes protest

The Arizona Republic
Nov. 18, 2005 12:00 AM
Corinne Purtill

Ahwatukee Foothills residents turned out by the hundreds Thursday to get the facts and air their feelings on the proposed South Mountain Freeway.

And community members seemed to have one message for the Arizona Department of Transportation: Not in our town.

"I just plain don't want it," said Daniel Thompson, who wore a T-shirt printed with "South Mountain 202" inside a red circle with a line through it.

By late afternoon, nearly 1,000 people had showed up for the daylong open house hosted by ADOT at the Grace Inn. They began pouring into the meeting hall before the scheduled noon start time. Similar meetings earlier in the week in Avondale and Laveen had a combined total attendance of about 600.

As currently designed, the freeway would claim as many as 255 existing and planned homes in Ahwatukee.