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

DATE: MONDAY, September 6, 1993                   TAG: 9311240267
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TOWN-GOWN

Tech's campus has grown (and grown and grown) for many years around a small parcel of privately owned land, owned by Irene Heavener and her family. The family's property, once on the edge of the university, is now smack-dab in the middle of the campus - about two blocks from the drill field.

Tech has had designs on the land for decades. It has penciled it in as the site for a major new academic building on its master plan. But it didn't want to evict Heavener family members from their home, so the school's been content to bide its time.

This year, the family said it was ready to sell and move on. Here was Tech's long-awaited chance to get the land.

But it gambled - low-balling its bid - and the family turned it down.

Poker-faced, Tech kept biding its time.

In the meantime, however, Ray Chisholm, a private developer in Blacksburg, teamed up with a group of Charlottesville investors and bought the property out from under Tech's nose. The family said he "made us an offer we couldn't refuse."

Chisholm has often been a thorn in Tech's side. (He ran unsuccessfully for Blacksburg Town Council in 1990 on a platform of reducing Tech's heavy influence on the governing body.) He has talked about building high-rise student-housing facilities on the land. Few would argue that more student housing isn't needed.

Tech, though, doesn't want it in that particular location, and, indeed, Tech is not without influence in such matters.

Because the Heavener property is in the university zoning district, the university must be consulted before the town approves any building project on the property - regardless of who owns the land.

Chisholm says if his building plans qualify under the university district zoning classification, Tech shouldn't be able to stop them from going forward. Try it, he says, and he might sue - or, at least, raise a major town-gown zoning ruckus.

Chisholm, of course, could be bluffing. He could be simply trying to raise the stakes, maybe sweeten the pot for the investors.

Does Tech have an ace up its sleeve? Maybe. The university's board of visitors went into executive (closed) session recently to discuss an unidentified parcel of land. For the moment, though, it looks like Chisholm has called the game and it's time to shut up and deal.