Officials to plan land use along roads to memorial

The 1,500-acre memorial will honor the passengers who fought terrorist hijackers.
SOMERSET, Pa. (AP) -- Officials in rural Somerset County are taking pre-emptive measures to ensure that the lazy, rolling roads that lead to a memorial being built for the passengers and crew of United Flight 93 do not become a traffic nightmare.
"There's a definite concern about uncontrolled commercial development on the corridor leading to the crash site," said Brad Zearfoss, executive director of the Somerset County Planning Commission.
The county is bringing in commercial planning and development specialists, estimating that a quarter-million people a year will be drawn to the 1,500-acre memorial being created to honor the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The director of land-use programs for The Conservation Fund, based in Washington, D.C., will be in Somerset on Thursday to discuss land use. A presentation by Ed McMahon, "The Dollars and Sense of Preserving Community Character," will be open to the public at the courthouse. Over the weekend, a team from Ball State University of Indiana will hold workshops on tourism for the corridor, which stretches from Somerset to the crash site near Shanksville, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
What's known
Much of what happens within the boundaries of the memorial will be decided on the federal level, but the land surrounding it is the responsibility of local officials.
"Change is coming," said Joanne Hanley, superintendent of Flight 93 National Memorial for the National Park Service. "It really depends upon the citizens as to how they want to portray their community."
Flight 93, the only one of four hijacked planes that did not take a life on the ground, was en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco when it made a sudden turn near Cleveland, eventually crashing into a field near Shanksville. All 40 passengers and crew members aboard were killed.
Families of passengers aboard the flight say they believe their loved ones fought their way into the cockpit and grappled for control of the plane before it went down. The FBI has suggested that terrorists may have deliberately crashed the plane because of the revolt.
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