THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 17, 1997 TAG: 9701180350
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MEREDITH COHN AND MAC DANIEL, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: 64 lines
Civic activists trying to stall a housing development failed to collect enough signatures by a Thursday deadline to bring the matter to a public vote.
The residents, organized by the Chesapeake Council of Civic Organizations, gathered only about half of the nearly 10,000 signatures they needed to force changes in the Greenbrier development between Kempsville and Butts Station roads.
The area was zoned for single-family houses, but the City Council rezoned the 127 acres to allow for a denser ``planned-unit development'' that mixes housing for elderly people with townhouses and commercial areas with $250,000 homes.
Opponents of the development, called Warrington Hall, fear the increased traffic will be a safety problem. They said they do not want any more construction until Kempsville Road is widened, a project that won't begin until 1998 at the earliest and will take several years.
The petition could not have stopped development on the site, but could have limited the developer to building fewer houses without commercial and office space.
``I'm very relieved,'' said Carroll Williamson, the Boston landscape architect who is behind Warrington Hall. ``It's been really stressful the whole time. I feel bad about it. And I feel for the people who are affected by this thing because they've moved to an area that's in the process of being developed. When they moved there they saw these farms, they saw the open space. And when they moved there I guess they thought it wouldn't change. But it does change.''
Gene Waters, president of the civic organization, said the group now will seek a meeting with City Council to work on ways to lessen the effects on surrounding neighborhoods.
Waters also said there were many positive results from the failed referendum drive.
``It was a great project to bring together people from disparate sections of the city,'' Waters said.
``Some people even wanted to start their own civic leagues and keep working with us on other issues,'' he said. ``We now have a network in place for the future. Also, people became educated about the city's growth problems and policies, and who on the council follows what.''
Further, Waters said, about 100 volunteers going door to door collecting signatures were able to help many residents register to vote - although the newly registered voters were not eligible to sign the petition.
Waters said several issues hampered the volunteers' efforts to collect signatures. The civic activists collected signatures from the day the City Council voted for the zoning change Dec. 17 until Thursday, but 90 percent of the signatures came in after Jan. 1. Waters said the holidays and cold weather made the task more difficult.
Williamson has said that Warrington Hall will be a user-friendly alternative to the lack of neighborhood cohesion and green space found in most housing developments. He said he has wanted to build a planned-unit development on land owned by his family for years.
The development will have minimal impact on local roads and schools, Williamson has argued, because of the amount of elderly housing and because the development will be phased in over five years.
Williamson sought initial approval from the Planning Commission last July. Planning commissioners voted in favor of the project in November, and the City Council approved it in December. ILLUSTRATION: Gene Waters