MIDDLESEX TWP — Residents near the state’s proposed Route 228 realignment said they felt blindsided by the plans released in November.

Four or five properties on Allemande Lane and Harbison Road would be taken in the state Department of Transportation’s 1.5-mile Ball’s Bend project, which would eliminate the curves in the road for a newly routed straight 5-lane path.

“Everyone is in shock,” said Ellen Flemma, who is one of the owners of the Hawkins Farm, which will be split in half by the proposed route. “We’ve been treated to different PennDOT plans for at least 10 years, but none of them went offline (of the existing path).”

Flemma said the new route would direct 5 lanes of traffic through the farm, which is about 80 acres and managed by the King family.

Flemma’s family has owned the land for nearly a century.

“If they take that land, then it’s gone forever,” she said.

Flemma is one of many residents trying to fight the proposed plan.

Debbi Kenney said she and her husband, Rich, have spent more than $30,000 in recent years making improvements to their home because they were told the state was going to be widening the existing road south of their property.

“The plans they showed us have the ramp to get onto (Route) 228 going right through my kitchen,” Kenney said.

Kenney said even if the ramp to the road is moved, the 5-lane road would still be 50 feet from her home.

Kenney said she, like her neighbors, first learned of the proposal at a PennDOT meeting in November at the Adams Township building. She and her neighbors received letters from PennDOT telling them of the meeting.

“None of us had ever seen this route before then,” she said.

Kenney has lived in the home for about 40 years.

“I understand there is change,” she said. “But had we known we certainly wouldn’t have spent all that money making improvements. We planned to live there the rest of our lives.”

Ann Augustine, a relative of Kenney, lives north of Kenney on Augustine Lane. Her husband’s family has lived on the property for more than a century.

“It’s going to come right through my front yard,” she said of the road. “This is property that we looked forward to giving to our children and grandchildren. And they think they can just take it.”

Augustine said every plan the state has discussed for more than a decade has kept the road at its current path.

“This just came out of thin air,” she said.

Flemma said she is concerned about straightening the road coming off Route 8.

“It’s going to be a racetrack,” she said. “People will come off Route 8 and speed right up to where the school is.”

Flemma said she also has questions about the cost of the proposed project compared to the previous plans, as well as access points onto the road for local traffic.

She said she isn’t confident the state will change, but said she will continue to fight the project.

“Our family is probably the least impacted by this,” she said. “We’re not losing our house. We’re not losing our way of life. This is life-changing to them. And that’s unnecessary.”

Melissa Passafiume, whose home is on Harbison Road one house away from the intersection with Allemande Lane, was unimpressed with the plans displayed in November.

Passafiume, whose work as a graphic artist with landscaping and engineering firms over 20 years has given her experience on public plan presentations, said the plans for Route 228 used in November by PennDOT officials was poorly presented.

She said the main display at the November roll-out in Adams looked like a bad aerial map with a highlighting marker used as the new path of Route 228.

“I thought the presentation of the material was inadequate,” Passafiume said.

She said she and her neighbors had a hard time locating sites on the aerial map because it was of poor quality.

“And I have a background in master planning,” Passafiume said.

She said she can’t find plans for the project online, and that there is no real information anywhere about the data PennDOT used.

“There’s not elevation or traffic flow studies,” Passafiume said. “It’s just one big poorly done Google map.”

She also decried the single meeting PennDOT held to roll out the plan. Passafiume said in her job, she has seen much better community outreach on much smaller plans.

“I don’t care for it, even if it is a legitimate concept,” Passafiume said. “It wasn’t properly handled with the community.”

She bought her property on Harbison Road in August 2012.

“How this has been handled has just blown my mind,” Passafiume said.

PennDOT design project manager Chad Mosco has said that the plans were revealed in their early stages — before some of the elements had been engineered — to apprise residents that the project did not follow the current Route 228.

Eagle staff writer Paula Grubbs contributed to this report.