
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 16, 1990                   TAG: 9003162296
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: DEBORAH SENSABAUGH SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEIGHBORS FEAR W&L TAX IMPACT

Loss of tax base as fraternity houses are renovated and bought by Washington and Lee University prompted residents' concerns Thursday night during a hearing before the City Council.

Besides the tax base loss, residents also were worried that future uses of possible vacated fraternity houses might adversely affect some of Lexington's residential areas.

The two changes to the five-year-old university master plan would permit its institutional zoning district to encompass the present fraternity houses and to permit fraternities and sororities to be a permitted use in the zone.

Under city ordinance, fraternities and sororities are allowed only with conditional-use permits. All but one of the present fraternities have been allowed as a non-conforming use in chiefly residential district.

That status does not permit the major renovation the university would like to make with its fraternity renaissance program.

Under the program, W&L plans to pour about $10 million into the fraternities, including assuming ownership of the fraternity houses. Once owned by the university, the fraternity property would become tax-exempt.

Mayor Homer E. "Buddy" Derrick Jr. said that if the university is allowed to own the fraternities, it plans to make up for lost tax revenue to the city with service charges and annual grants.

One unidentified city resident was concerned because 60 percent of Lexington's real estate at present is non-taxable. "Will the tax base be reduced by the change in the master plan?" he asked council.

Derrick said that the university plans to pay the city an annual grant of $40,000 and that the total payments to the city in service charges and grant money will be $160,000 a year.

City resident Jim Berger said he was worried that a vacated fraternity house might be used as offices or other uses non-compatible with residential neighborhoods.

Frank Parsons, coordinator of capital planning at W&L, told Berger that a vacated fraternity would be used as by foreign-language students or some other classes.

City Manager Joe King said other stringent zoning controls were not supplanted by institutional zoning, thus making a non-compatible use difficult to allow.

A public hearing on the actual zoning change to permit fraternities and sororities in the institutional zone must be held before council can take action on the master plan update. That hearing will be at 8 p.m. March 29.

by CNB