Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 6, 1993 TAG: 9305050208
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It's just a ribbon of land no more than several hundred feet wide in some places.
What makes the parkway remarkable is the view it affords of land outside its boundaries.
"It's sort of a platform for people to climb up and look out from," said Peter Givens, a parkway interpretative specialist.
The problem, however, is the National Park Service owns little of the land visible from the parkway.
The pastoral landscape has eroded as private property along the narrow parkway corridor has been snatched up by developers for use as residential subdivisions and vacation homes.
For decades, the Park Service has pleaded with local governments along the 470-mile parkway for help in protecting scenic views.
"If we preserve the parkway and destroy the adjoining lands, what we are preserving the parkway for is pretty well destroyed, too," then-Superintendent Granville Liles warned in 1971.
Roanoke County is the first locality to take up the challenge.
County planners have embarked on a pioneer effort to develop special regulations for private property that is highly visible from 30 miles of parkway on the eastern edge of the Roanoke Valley.
Parkway officials say the Roanoke County regulations could become a model for other host counties in Virginia and North Carolina.
Roanoke County's regulations - which are months away from adoption - may disappoint purists who want to turn the clock back to a tableau of rustic farms and mountain meadows.
A committee that is studying the issue is more likely to allow residential development to continue, but seek to lessen the impact on the parkway with limits on density and standards on design.
County Planner Janet Scheid said the committee - which includes developers, parkway officials and a conservationist - has found no easy answers.
"It's a real conflict between private property rights and the public's right to the parkway," she said.
The parkway study was sparked by plans to develop the Beasley Farm, which sits hard against the parkway near Back Creek, between mileposts 125 and 126.
Approaching from the south, the farm offers a panoramic view like no other in the Roanoke Valley. Rolling pastures set off by gnarled fence posts come into view on both sides of the parkway. The pasture on the left quickly rises to a knoll. The land to the right falls away, forming a large grassy bowl set off by hardwoods. Buck Mountain juts on the horizon.
"Standing right here," Scheid said during a recent tour, "you wouldn't know you were in Roanoke County if you didn't know any better."
The land is so exposed from the parkway that some believe any attempt to develop it would destroy one of the few pasture views remaining in Roanoke County.
But the developer who has an option to buy the Beasley Farm for $10,000 an acre disagrees.
Len Boone said he can build a subdivision on the land - even in the 30-acre grassy bowl - without creating an eyesore. His plans unveiled in December call for clustered houses designed with metal roofs and other features found in traditional structures along the parkway. Some of the land would be left open.
"We would like to think we are good citizens and conscious of something as important to the country as the Blue Ridge Parkway," Boone said last week.
Boone is serving on the committee in hopes of reaching a compromise with county planners. He and his partners also have sued the county to protect their investment in the 255-acre farm.
After three months of weekly meetings, the committee has reached no agreement on what type of development should be allowed in the grassy bowl and other areas visible from the parkway.
"We keep coming around in circles," said Lynn Davis, who represents the Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway, a group dedicated to preserving the scenic road. "I wish we had the brain of an Einstein to come up with some answers."
Davis said that it is natural for developers like Boone to be drawn to the parkway's scenic beauty. But few stop to consider that the parkway's value - both to the public and the developer - is diminished each time a pastoral view is compromised, she said.
"They are killing the goose that laid the golden egg," Davis said.
Cash for restrictions
The difficulty of preserving parkway views dates to the 1930s, when the original landscape architects designed the parkway with no visual boundaries.
They blended the narrow parkway land with neighboring fields and pastures to give motorists the impression of a seamless rural landscape of pioneer farms and mountain forests.
Stanley W. Abbott, who oversaw the parkway's design, realized the need for protecting the views and sought "scenic easements" to adjoining property. Farmers reeling from the Depression were given cash in exchange for restrictions on what could be built on their land.
"We want the farms as part of the picture and we do not want factories or hot-dog stands or billboards," Abbott explained in the 1930s.
Because scenic easements could be obtained for a small number of tracts, the parkway would remain only as pastoral as the land around it.
Many miles of the parkway remain unchanged since the first section opened in 1939. But some views have been altered by vacation homes and suburban sprawl from nearby cities such as Asheville, N.C.
Development pressure has had the most visible impact on the Roanoke section, which was completed in 1965.
The panorama from the Read Mountain overlook features the giant Tweeds warehouse and tract houses spreading up the mountain.
The pulloff for the Stewarts Knob overlook is marked by a green water tank that juts above the parkway.
A roadside cutting of trees near U.S. 220 has opened a view of ridge-line mansions at Hunting Hills.
Parkway officials have been unable to prevent this encroachment in Roanoke and elsewhere on the parkway because development has taken place on private property outside the parkway's corridor.
Tree tunnel?
In 1988, the parkway enacted a Land Protection Plan that provided several million dollars to buy adjoining land. The top priority, however, was closing private entrances to the parkway, not preserving views.
In some cases, the parkway has planted pines to provide a buffer to subdivisions and vacation homes. But officials fear turning the parkway into a 470-mile tunnel of trees.
The Park Service is studying the possibility of protecting the parkway by listing it on the National Register of Historic Places. The listing also would give localities the option of bringing adjacent land under historic districts.
Robert A. Hope has learned to accept the inevitability of change during his 30 years as the parkway's landscape architect.
"We're fighting a lost cause if you think we'll always have an agricultural scene," Hope said. "It's inevitable that landscapes change. But I don't think we ought to compromise on scenic beauty."
Hope believes the parkway can accommodate suburbia and vacation homes if other localities will follow Roanoke County's lead.
The Park Service first called on local governments to control growth in the mid-1960s, when developers in Patrick County began selling parkway lots beside the parkway.
The calls for action went unheeded in rural areas of Virginia and North Carolina where people are hostile to government control of land-use decisions. Fewer than half of the 29 counties along the parkway had even rudimentary zoning ordinances in place.
Roanoke County had one of the most progressive ordinances, yet planners created no special parkway district when they revised the county's zoning regulations last fall.
In fact, county planners recommended opening hundreds of agricultural acres - including the Beasley Farm - to residential and industrial development along the parkway.
The proposal alarmed parkway officials, who persuaded the Board of Supervisors to delay action until a study could be completed. County Administrator Elmer Hodge appointed the committee to make recommendations.
The panel's first task was to decide what property is "critical" or "sensitive" to views along the parkway. The committee took into account topography, existence of surrounding development and distance from the parkway.
The next step will be the more difficult task of deciding what limits to place on land in the critical views.
"We'll have to wrestle with that alligator," Scheid said.
Scheid said options include limitations on density to cut down on the number of houses visible from the parkway and design standards to help houses blend into the rural scenery.
Many of the issues involve legal questions that have never been tested in court. For instance, can the county dictate design standards or merely recommend them?
Much of the committee's energy has been spent haggling over the Beasley Farm.
Some committee members have pushed for a ban on any development in the grassy bowl that is so visible from the parkway.
"The bowl is impossible to protect," Davis, the Friends of the Parkway representative, said.
Some members have suggested that Boone leave the bowl open in return for increasing the density of houses on land that is not visible from the parkway.
But Boone said his plans are not economically feasible unless he can build some houses and the main access road from Cotton Hill Road in the bowl.
"It's unrealistic to say it's not going to be developed," Boone said. "The reality is that it's going to happen. The question is: Do you want there to be a [design] standard?"
Givens, the parkway representative on the committee, said there are hundreds of tracts along the length of the narrow parkway corridor where development is a threat.
"We may be fighting a losing battle," he said. "There is no doubt that this is something that parkway managers will be dealing with from here on out."
Davis said counties along the parkway should realize they have an interest in preserving the roadway's scenic beauty. The parkway creates jobs, attracts tourists and enhances the taxable value of adjoining land.
"The scenic view does generate money," she said. "You can't ignore that."
by CNB