Behind the no-trespassing sign at The Legacy Inn's entrance, a handful of families are among those who call this motel home.

Two residents raising children at the east Henrico County inn near Richmond International Airport say they can't afford to live anywhere else, but they're afraid to let their children play outdoors.

"They don't like it here. They don't get outside enough. They're active little boys," said one mother, who wouldn't give her name, while she waited with her children for a school bus to arrive Friday morning. After they boarded the bus, she stepped past a discarded 22- ounce beer can wrapped in a paper bag.

Guests at the Legacy, which has 124 rooms, include families, transients, construction workers and the occasional businessman or traveler.

Last week, a Shenandoah Valley family's brief stopover at the motel ended tragically, with the father fatally shot during a robbery.

That shooting is drawing attention to the motel and the corridor near the airport that has about 1.4 million passenger boardings each year. Public officials, who had already targeted the area as needing attention, promised action while also telling residents and visitors that The Legacy Inn does not reflect the overall climate of the busy section of Williamsburg Road leading to the airport.

"I think we owe the people that visit Henrico County the comfort of knowing that they are safe when they walk into a motel at night," said Supervisor Richard W. Glover of Henrico's Brookland District. "I think we owe them absolute safety and security."

Anil Patel, listed in corporate records as the principal figure in the motel's ownership, did not respond to repeated calls and messages over three days asking for comment.

Adam Higgins has lived in the neighborhood behind The Legacy Inn for seven years and wants to see the motel shut down.

"It's just attracted a lot of bad elements," he said. "Being that I've lived back here for so long, you can sit here on any given night in the summer and hear people fight." He calls it noise pollution.

He worries for his young daughter but tries to take his worries in stride, likening the perception of danger to the way he's acclimated himself to the roar of the nearby airport.

"It's like the airplanes -- it's gone on so long you just deal with it."
. . .

Gary E. Post Sr. of Broadway ended up at The Legacy Inn after a hotel reservation was inadvertently made for the wrong day.

"It was pure happenstance, something that was never supposed to happen," said Ann Wenneson, who provided details of how her brother-in-law wound up at a motel with a reputation for danger.

The botched reservations put Post, 53, and his two sons on Williamsburg Road looking for a room late Tuesday night. They planned to spend the night and leave early the next day on a flight for Texas to attend a wedding.

Their third try at finding a room proved fatal.

Moments after the Posts drove through the entrance of The Legacy Inn and found a cut-rate room there, four gunmen -- each carrying a semi-automatic pistol -- confronted the trio as they unloaded their luggage. A gunshot rang out, and Post lay dying on a sidewalk outside Room 131 early Wednesday.

The shooting has brought immeasurable pain to Post's three surviving children, to his wife, Mary; to his extended family; and to the 3,500 residents of Broadway where they have lived the past 14 years.

"We hope people will understand what a huge hole this good man's death has left in this family and in this small, very close community," said Wenneson, who is Mary Post's sister.

Last week, Glover and Henrico County Manager Virgil R. Hazelett promised broad investigations into operations at The Legacy Inn, where Post's death punctuated a long history of police concerns.

Since April 1 of last year, police have received more than 80 calls for help in the block dominated by the 3.7-acre Legacy property -- for robberies, vice crimes and incidents related to alcohol use, troublesome animals, gunfire, assaults, disorderly conduct and, most frequently, "suspicious conduct."

Hazelett said he will work through negotiation and the law to make a change.

"We will be looking into virtually everything we can do from a legal standpoint," he said. "There will be a heightened presence [of law enforcement], no doubt in my mind."

But that had not happened until Post's death. Four police cruisers idled outside the motel Friday night.

Hazelett stressed that local government can be limited in what it can do to fashion individual remedies, but he said he will work with Legacy management to find solutions.

"This is a business, and they are there to make money, so I have to assume they are concerned or at least should be," Hazelett said.

Others hope the shooting will not deter nascent efforts to upgrade the area.

"Problems at the inn shouldn't reflect poorly on the whole corridor. It's not the whole area," said E. Ray Jernigan, Varina District planning commissioner.

Henrico added the Williamsburg Road corridor in June 2006 to its enterprise zone program, which is meant to encourage revitalization. A business association in eastern Henrico recently banded together to address issues. New hotels spawned by millions of dollars in improvements to the airport and increased ridership there are more the norm along Williamsburg Road.
James B. Donati Jr., Varina District supervisor, has seen the growth coming for years. He opened a gas station in 1971 at what is now Airport Square Lane and Williamsburg roads; the property now contains a Courtyard by Marriott. It is within a half block of the Legacy property, where a drive-in theater once stood.

Donati called The Legacy Inn situation an isolated problem, but he urged management to address what is happening.

"It's really not acceptable what's been going on there -- the calls for service," he said. "We would like for them to present themselves a whole lot better and not have those calls. . . . I think there's going to be a lot of attention, obviously, now."
. . .

The Legacy Inn left its mark on Mike Hazlewood, a longtime legislative assistant who made the place his home for three years during General Assembly sessions. "I bought my own towels and pillow," he said.

He avoided the phone system, tolerated the cigarette burns on the carpet and learned a life lesson the hard way. "When there's a knock on the door, don't open it," a friendly clerk advised him. "What do you think the peep-hole is for?"

Once, he responded to a knock only to get propositioned by a forlorn-looking woman in his doorway. "A little bit earlier, she'd asked for cigarettes," Hazlewood explained.

Hazlewood said the $182 a week he paid to live there was a steal, and he loved the nearby Country Style Donuts and Andy's Barbecue.

But he got a stern warning from a confidante this year when he arrived for the upcoming session. "Mike," the person warned him. "Do not stay here anymore. It is not safe."
He moved to a place on the Boulevard across town.

"Best move I ever made," said Hazlewood, who said he's saddened but not surprised by last week's shooting.

One boy and his uncle moved to The Legacy Inn when their home in Varina became unlivable. Snakes and rot had invaded the house.

"It's OK, don't nobody bother anybody" at the motel, said the uncle, who works construction and pays $50 a day to live there. "Everyone just kind of stays to himself."
. . .

In Broadway this week, the community will mourn Post at a memorial service Thursday at the Linville Creek Church of the Brethren, named for the Shenandoah River tributary that runs past the Post home. A reception will follow at the Timberville Moose Lodge No. 2335. The service comes a week after Post and his two sons were supposed to have flown from Richmond to Texas for the wedding of a close family friend.

The Post home is one of the oldest in the Broadway community, and local folks marveled at the way Post and his wife weathered setbacks and raised their children. When the creek flooded one year, it wiped out years of work on the home.

But the view of North Mountain and Brock's Gap always seemed to be soothing, in the same way the community has always been there for the family, Wenneson said.

The last time there'd been such an outpouring of care for the Posts, she said, was in September 1994, after Gary Post's parents died in an automobile crash.

"They were on the way to Broadway to see the new place their son had come to live," Wenneson said.

Contact staff writer Olympia Meola at omeola@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6812.
Contact staff writer Bill McKelway at bmckelway@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6601.