Ever since Jennifer Vendena moved into her home in a gated community in Eastwood seven years ago, she has had problems with trespassers cutting through her yard. Looking at a map, it’s easy to see why.
Her home on Anna Catherine Drive sits at the back of the Northwood subdivision, on the border of neighboring Avalon Lakes, with no roads connecting the two. From her home to Timber Creek High School, it is only a few blocks, by foot. But if driving, the distance is more like five miles.
On a daily basis, when school lets out, Vendena sees a parade of students traipsing along the drainage swale behind her house and then between her home and her neighbor’s. In the mornings she has even witnessed parents driving their vans full of teenagers up to the front of her house, and dropping them off so they could cut through the yards on their way to school.
The surprising thing, she said, is that these must be families that live inside the gated community, who supposedly chose to live there for an extra measure of privacy and safety. While this situation has proven to be annoying, leaving homeowners unsettled about the loss of security, the Vendenas still enjoy their home. In fact, they recently screened in their patio to take full advantage of the view.
The situation, however, has suddenly taken a serious turn for the worse and now affects the safety of all the children on her block. On March 17, her husband was inspecting the construction being done on their screen enclosure when he noticed tire tracks in the backyard.
The tracks, though, were too wide to belong to a rider mower or even an all-terrain vehicle. To their shock and disbelief, the foot traffic cutting through their yard apparently has escalated into vehicle traffic. “When school lets out we have at least 50 students walking across the yards back here, but foot traffic and automotive traffic are totally different,” she said.
And this is not a one-time incident. Soon thereafter, she heard a loud rumbling just outside her window, further evidence that her yard was becoming a cut-through for street traffic. “I heard it and I felt it early in the morning. I jumped up and saw a car exiting onto the street from my yard,” she said.
“I’ve seen people coming through here, I’ve seen scooters coming through here, I’ve seen mopeds coming through here, I’ve seen motorcycles coming through here, but now cars too.” “This is not safe and I am very concerned for the safety of myself and my family,” she said. “With no fence separating our neighborhood from Avalon Lakes, all of our homes are at risk.
With cars driving between our houses, our properties and our lives are in danger. “This problem is an accident waiting to happen.” But the Vendenas are not waiting. They have erected a makeshift barrier of planters next to their home. Not much, but hopefully enough to divert traffic. But Vendena doesn’t just want to push the problem toward others.
She appealed to the Eastwood Community Association for help, requesting that a row of trees be established along this stretch of the border. It wouldn’t have to be that extensive, she said, because most of Eastwood’s boundaries already have buffers such as walls or conservation areas.
Why, she asked, should the folks along Anna Catherine Drive have a guard and gate to protect the front entrance of their community, but leave the back open and unprotected? But, in an exchange of e-mails, a representative of Eastwood’s management company explained that the community does not have jurisdiction over private property.
“Eastwood [Community Association] does not own any common area behind your house, your neighbors’ homes or Avalon [Lakes] homes, so there isn’t anything the [ECA] can do about installing a fence or installing anything to keep them out,” stated Cheryl Simmons in reply to Vendena’s plea. Joining the e-mail chain, Thomas Anderson, chairman of the Safety and Access Committee for The Preserve, representing the 655 homes in the gated community, explained that in the past there was a similar situation in which the association was able to offer assistance.
When construction vehicles were coming into the Augusta subdivision through an unauthorized point of entry from Eagles Hammock, Anderson said the ECA used money from a landscaping grant to plant trees to block the thoroughfare. But ECA President Ken Zook said the situations are not the same because there is no common area behind the Vendena property.
“You can’t spend public money on private property,” Zook said. He explained that such a project must be taken on by homeowners in The Preserve, rather than by Eastwood as a whole. Resident Joe Marullo said that when he moved to Anna Catherine Drive in 2001, he was told by the builder that some kind of barrier was going to be built behind the homes.
But Marullo wasn’t overly concerned. At the time, there was no Avalon Lakes backing up to his home, only cows grazing on an open prairie that also was the habitat of turkeys and deer. But he now worries about the safety of neighborhood children.
“There are a lot of young children in the area who could be run over. And some time we leave our garage door open,” he said. “It’s kind of scary. At nighttime you can hear them walk by here.” Because his backyard is fenced in, he hasn’t had to face the prospect of cars driving across his property. But he has seen some vehicle traffic cross into Avalon Lakes around a water-retention pond through the conservation area.
He is concerned that the problem is coming ever closer. “We’re not saying we want security like Isleworth, but we want some kind of deterrent to keep people from cutting through,” Marullo said.
