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

DATE: THURSDAY, January 26, 1995                   TAG: 9501260111
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DEVELOPERS, PARKWAY OFFICIALS BEGIN TALKS

Nonetheless, on Wednesday, 16 people representing five different perspectives came together to work peacefully on plans for development along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Local developers, federal officials and professional architects launched a three-day workshop on how to accommodate growth while preserving the views along the national scenic highway.

"There is a precedent for what we're doing," Carlton Abbott told the group and another 35 people who attended a two-hour public information meeting in Vinton.

Abbott, a Williamsburg architect whose father was a key designer of the parkway, specializes in the often-controversial issues surrounding development around national parks and historic sites. Increasingly, he said, officials and landowners involved in these tussles are sitting down together to find common ground.

Wednesday, the local participants hit the ground running.

There were five officials with the National Park Service, several members of the nonprofit Coalition for the Blue Ridge Parkway, Abbott and Roanoke landscape architect David Hill, three representatives of Roanoke County, and two developers who own land in the county along the parkway. All have talked about the need to preserve the views while allowing for the inevitable growth from adjacent population centers along the 470-mile parkway.

The developers, Len Boone and Steve Musselwhite, offered their parcels to be used by workshop participants to experiment with site design, road placement, landscaping, housing density and architecture. The results could be used as models for future development along the parkway in Virginia and North Carolina.

Park Superintendent Gary Everhardt, who drove from the park's Asheville, N.C., headquarters to attend, thanked everyone for their involvement, and said he was confident they would find a "proper solution that meets the needs of this community and protects the national treasure," the parkway.

Armed with drafting tables, topographical maps, photographs, magic markers and pencils, the participants got down to work Wednesday night, and will work through Friday morning. Friday afternoon, they will give an update on their progress.