3 SUITS FILED OVER PARKWAY ZONING

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

DATE: SATURDAY, January 16, 1993                   TAG: 9301160305
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short
3 SUITS FILED OVER PARKWAY ZONING
Roanoke County found out that protecting pastoral views along the Blue Ridge Parkway will be no easy trick.
A development company and two landowners filed lawsuits Friday claiming the county Board of Supervisors "unduly" restricted development along the scenic roadway by zoning their property for agricultural use.
Boone, Boone & Loeb Inc., Nicholas H. Beasley and Norman J. Sigmon want the right to put residential subdivisions on land adjoining the parkway.
The Board of Supervisors - acting at the request of the National Park Service - voted last month to limit development on four large agricultural tracts off Cotton Hill Road, adjacent to the parkway.
The board overturned the Planning Commission, which recommended that the tracts be designated for subdivisions as part of a overall revision of the county's zoning ordinance.
In the lawsuit, filed in Roanoke County Circuit Court, attorney Ed Natt argued that the supervisors acted "at the 11th hour" and did not give landowners ample opportunity to rebut the zoning limits.
Natt filed the lawsuits on behalf of Sigmon, who owns 98 acres, and Booone, Boone & Loeb, which has contracted to buy 235 acres from Beasley.
County Administrator Elmer Hodge has said his staff would try to to reach a compromise with the developers and the National Park Service.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB