Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 6, 1993 TAG: 9304060274
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: YORKTOWN LENGTH: Medium
GUN CLUB RANGES CAN REOPEN, JUDGE SAYS
A judge ruled Monday that the Lafayette Gun Club can reopen two outdoor firing ranges that had been abandoned and went unused for several years.Residents around the 44-year-old club hoped to use the case as a way to argue that the facility is a threat to their neighborhoods. But retired Circuit Judge Fred Bateman said the issue was one of zoning, not noise and safety, and he ruled that York County officials could not prevent the club from restoring the two ranges.
County Attorney James Barnett said the county has 30 days to file an appeal.
The club sued York County after the Board of Zoning Appeals refused to overturn an administrative decision to block reopening the two firing ranges. The club has two other ranges in use.
Because the club was founded a decade before a zoning code was adopted in 1959, it is "grandfathered in" and exempt from residential zoning. But that also means the club cannot expand.
Club members argue that the request to reopen the abandoned ranges would not be an expansion.
The four ranges "constitute one body of land and one, common activity - range shooting," club attorney D. Wayne Moore wrote in a court brief. "The installation of safety berms for the 200- and 35-meter ranges is at the very most an intensification" of the land use.
But neighbors say the gun club has a "history of unwillingness to adapt and protect surrounding residential development," according to a brief filed by homeowners from three adjacent subdivisions.
"We question if the club can provide absolute assurance that bullets will never escape their property and impact the surrounding neighborhood," the neighbors' brief said.
The gun club is surrounded by single-family homes that county officials have allowed to be built over the last two decades, something that Del. Harvey Morgan, R-Gloucester, said was a mistake.
"I don't think the county should ever have permitted any subdivisions that would be allowed to be built right up against the gun club," said Morgan, who tried unsuccessfully to mediate the zoning dispute last fall.
"And I don't understand why anyone would build houses so close to a gun range, and if they do, why they would complain of the noise," Morgan said. "The whole thing was a comedy of errors."
But Nora Emerson, one nearby resident who doesn't like the noise, said she and her husband moved into their home long before the club was formed.
She said she has always been bothered by the noise, but it has become worse since concrete-reinforced baffles were built behind the two ranges now in use.
Gun club members acknowledge the new baffles create more noise by reflecting sound back toward Emerson's house.
Several neighbors said their property has been hit by gunfire.