Butchertown Neighborhood Association

Letter From the President

May 16, 2002

We are beginning a new era of enthusiasm in Butchertown, and we are faced with perhaps the greatest challenge of our 200-year history. This crisis, like previous ones, is caused by our proximity to the Ohio River.

?• In the 1860?’s the Big Four Bridge was built with
its railroad approaches cutting through the neighborhood. 40 Butchertown residents were killed in during the construction.

?• The 1937 Flood wiped out hundreds of homes on the Point, and flooded most of Butchertown.

?• In the mid 1960?’s hundreds more lost their homes when I-64 and Spaghetti Junction gouged their way through Butchertown.

Today, and over the next 10 years, we will experience the building of a new bridge and relocation of Spaghetti Junction. Unless we are forceful enough to prevent it, we will have years of day and night construction dust, noise, and truck traffic on our residential streets.

Unless we fight together, we will have elevated expressway ramps in our back yards elevated three times higher than the existing floodwall! Take a look at the floodwall and imagine it. When you look toward the river you will see ramps as tall as a six-story building circling our northern boundary within feet of the back of properties on Franklin and Quincy Street.

We need your help. Call me at 583-1400 with ideas you have to help us build strength, enthusiasm, and spirit. Those are the things that will give us success.

Jim Segrest III, President