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

DATE: SUNDAY, February 27, 1994                   TAG: 9402250366
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Lon Wagner
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHAT'S GOOD FOR GOATS GNAWS AT CITY

Much of the land near Valley View Mall that Roanoke leaders want to open up to development with a new interstate access would, in many communities, be considered prime land for grazing goats. But not good for much else.

In Roanoke, though, undeveloped land is a dwindling commodity - even if some of it is "pretty rough," as one city official conceded.

When the city recently announced plans for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to build a supercenter on 25 acres behind Sears, Roebuck and Co.'s store at Valley View Mall, officials pledged to work for a new Interstate 581 interchange between Hershberger Road and 10th Street.

That interchange, they said, not only would provide a release valve for increased traffic around Valley View Mall, but would make 130 acres available for new businesses.

Mayor David Bowers says he knows the land isn't perfect. "The city is landlocked," Bowers says. "We've got to do the best with what we've got."

Significantly, what the city has doesn't belong the city. The 130 or so acres actually is a patchwork of 11 parcels owned by seven different people, companies or estates.

The tracts range from 1 or 2 acres to 62 acres. There's a house on one 9-acre parcel. The city's contribution is 4.5 acres used as a drainage pond.

And there are other hurdles to developing the land. Interstate 581 splits it. The good land lies on the Valley View side of I-581, just south of the mall. That's where the Wal-Mart will go, and where 60-plus acres of farmland stretch toward Round Hill Elementary School.

Faison Associates, the Charlotte, N.C., group that developed Valley View Mall, apparently has been talking with the owners of the 60 acres beside the mall.

Bowers and others would like to see that farmland developed, because it is now in the city's land-use program for agriculture. In other words, though the land - part zoned for residential use, part for light manufacturing - is assessed at $374,000, the landowners pay taxes only on $66,000, the land's value for agricultural purposes.

State law allows localities to assess certain categories of real estate, including farmland, at lower values based on their use, rather than their actual market worth.

But that's nothing compared to the Wal-Mart land. Those 25 acres, already zoned commercial, are assessed at $2.5 million, but the landowners pay taxes on just $27,300.

Wal-Mart's fee for bringing that land out of the land-use program means paying five years' back taxes for the commercial zoning, plus 10 percent interest. That comes to $215,000.

The rolling land on the other side of I-581 is much less desirable. Nearly all of it is zoned for residential use, and a ravine holding a little stream - Lick Run - bisects it.

Even if the Federal Highway Administration agrees to let the city build an interchange less than a mile from the existing one with Hershberger Road, the new interchange undoubtedly would use up some of the land the city wants to make available.

The city says that if the area qualifies as a state and federal economic development project, Roanoke residents would pay little for a new interchange.

The question is whether the state and federal governments will think it is worth millions of dollars to open up, at best, 130 acres of land for development.

by CNB