Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 14, 1993 TAG: 9310140161
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
One idea is setting up a two-state commission to help localities in Virginia and North Carolina cope with the encroachment of residential development.
"We want to work ahead of development, so that a developer who finds himself blocked isn't surprised," retired Rep. James Olin said at a news conference.
Olin and other parkway enthusiasts put the best face on the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors' decision Tuesday to allow Boone, Boone & Loeb to build houses on 83 scenic acres along the parkway in Southwest Roanoke County.
The company will be allowed to build up to five houses on an 8-acre grassy knoll identified as one of the 11 "critical" parkway views in the county.
Len Boone, a principal in the company, has agreed not to build any houses for five years to give the Blue Ridge Parkway or its supporters time to buy the 8 acres.
Preservationists have been cool to that offer because Boone has set the price at as much as $405,000 - or more than $50,000 per acre - to reflect the cost of roads and other subdivision improvements.
The group Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway was disappointed by the outcome but praised Roanoke County for becoming the first locality to tackle the difficult parkway issue.
"We have undervalued and underutilized a great resource," said Lynn Davis, a member of the group's executive committee.
Parkway Superintendent Gary Everhardt said a two-state parkway commission could muster the resources to acquire threatened views and suggest setback requirements, zoning regulations and landscape techniques to reduce the impact of building on private property next to the parkway.
"There are a lot of ways of protecting adjacent lands short of federal acquisition," he said.
Planning officials from North Carolina and Virginia will meet Oct. 19 in Boone, N.C., to discuss forming a parkway commission, he said.
Everhardt stressed that no effort can succeed without the cooperation of the 29 counties that lie along the parkway, which connects the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee.
Protecting the parkway through local land-use regulations will be no easy task, given the fact that more than half of the 29 counties lack any form of zoning.
"There is a lot of work that needs to be done by the counties and by both states," Everhardt said.
by CNB