Johnson City Regional Planning Commission will seek public input on MLK road change

A years-long effort led by a local NAACP chapter to have a Johnson City street named after civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. will culminate Thursday with a public input session.A Johnson City Regional Planning Commission task force, established to identify which street should bear King's name, will host the session from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the dining room of the Memorial Park Community Center, 510 Bert St.The session will be "drop-in" format, meaning participants can stop by, make a selection and leave.The streets under consideration include: East and West King Street from Elm Street to Watauga Avenue; Legion Street and University Parkway from State of Franklin Road to Market Street."This has been a long time coming and we just want to make sure that people are heard," Ralph Davis, president of the local NAACP chapter, said."We know there will be some opposition. There always is when you try to make a change, but we want it to be an informative meeting that's peaceful. We've not had any real controversy and we don't expect any."In June, the Planning Commission deferred a vote on the NAACP's proposal to change a portion of State of Franklin Road, from Bristol Highway to Sunset Drive, to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.Instead, the commission voted to form a task force with the sole goal of determining where and what would be the appropriate way to celebrate King's achievements."I think this is going to afford us (time) to carefully look at something that has a lot of significance for our city, something we can all feel really good about and feel like our whole community had a chance to really be a part of," Timothy Zajonc, chairman of the Planning Commission, told the Johnson City Press.Task force appointees included Davis, Wayne Roberts, Mike Cummings, Bill Coleman and Mark Redd. Zajonc and Jeff Benedict were the two Planning Commission representatives appointed to the task force.So far that task force has met twice, and during one of those meetings, members submitted their preferred street with the top three choices receiving public input."Some of those streets (submitted by task force members) were not an option because of 911 restrictions, GPS concerns and things like that," Davis said."So we came up with that list of three streets. That's the three we're going to discuss (and) those are the three we're inviting the community to speak towards. Hopefully out of those we can get a consensus on one of those."One of those three choices, Legion Street, was actually considered in 2012, but failed after the local American Legion chapter expressed concerns with changing the name.Davis said Legion Street is back on the ballot because local American Legion officials have said they won't oppose this initiative."They had decided they would not oppose us trying to get Legion Street so that opposition was removed. That was the reason it came back up," Davis said.The NAACP's favorite choice is University Parkway, according to Davis, considering its high visibility and the amount of traffic it sees, but he said the group would be satisfied regardless of the choice.Johnson City is the only city in the Tri-Cities without a street named after King. Kingsport renamed a part of Lincoln Street in 2008, and in 2007, Bristol, Virginia, and Bristol, Tennessee, officials designated a street Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, which runs through both cities. During the June meeting, Zajonc suggested the task force propose a recommendation on or before the Planning Commission's September meeting.Email Zach Vance at zvance@johnsoncitypress.com. Follow Zach Vance on Twitter at @ZachVanceJCP. Like him on Facebook at Facebook.com/ZachVanceJCP.