Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 14, 1994 TAG: 9401140366
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
The commission recommended 7-0 that the Board of Supervisors approve Holly and James Ratcliff's request to combine and improve two old parks just north of Christiansburg.
The supervisors will consider the Ratcliffs' rezoning and special-use permit requests at their Jan. 24 meeting.
At a December public hearing, three people complained about the Twin Lakes and Pine View mobile home parks and asked for fencing between their property and any future expansion.
One woman at the hearing compared children from the parks to dogs running loose.
Owner Holly Ratcliff told the commissioners that such comments spurred ``some very negative feelings'' among her family and park residents.
But she and her husband have made a conscious effort to improve the parks since since buying them three years ago, Holly Ratcliff said.
The previous owner opened the parks in the 1960s, before Montgomery County had a zoning ordinance. In their current form, they are ``grandfathered'' from the rules and regulations governing trailer parks.
But in order to nearly double the number of trailer spaces, the Ratcliffs must come in compliance with the ordinance, including obtaining the proper zoning and special-use permit.
They cleaned up trash, including old auto parts and tires, from the park and from nearby woods, Holly Ratcliff said. In the last two years they've ``cleaned house'' of problem tenants and now have new occupants in all but five of their 65 spaces, Ratcliff said.
While she recognizes the park is somewhat unsightly, she needs the rezoning to fix those problems, Ratcliff said.
``Their very complaints are what we're asking your permission to correct,'' she said.
Ratcliff said her current tenants ``are upstanding citizens in the community and should not be put down for living in a trailer park.''
Ratcliff said a privacy fence surrounding the expanded park would be costly and ineffective. The same objective could be reached using a changed layout, including vegetation and trees.
County planner Jeff Scott said much the same and suggested barberry hedges, a spiny shrub that can form a natural barrier.
The planners recommended approval of nine conditions to allow the Ratcliffs to go forward with the project. They include adding paved roads, fire hydrants, service by a public sewer system, a playground and state approval for a new entrance off narrow, winding Merrimac Road.
One factor that could hold up the project is the extension of public sewer lines to the area, because the roads in the park couldn't be paved until the pipes and manholes were laid. Ratcliff said she would meet with county Public Service Authority officials next week to discuss the extension.
County officials also are awaiting a speed study of traffic on Merrimac Road. The speed limit for the area may have to be lowered because of increased traffic.
Though the planners did not discuss it, the expansion of the park also could mean an additional 28 elementary and 18 secondary students for county schools, according to an estimate by school officials.
The number of elementary students, in particular, could affect the redrawing of attendance lines for the Blacksburg-area elementary schools, a process now under way with the expected opening of a new school on Prices Fork Road, west of town, in September
by CNB