Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 7, 1995 TAG: 9503070056
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Jesse Jones remembers a time when the mere mention of the words "land use planning" would raise the hackles of most Botetourt County residents.
"The thinking has been, 'Keep your hands off my land! Keep your hands off my wife,'" he says. "They saw it as a freedom issue."
Jones, now 86 and a former member of the county's Board of Supervisors, said that resistance impeded Botetourt County's ability to grow for years.
"The obstruction came from the masses because they didn't understand that good planning has benefits," he says. Eric Kelly, an expert in rural development at Iowa State University, said he attended a planning function in Prince William County, Va., not long ago. Kelly brought up the idea of cluster zoning, where houses in subdivisions are grouped closer together to make maximum use of open space.
"They looked at me like I was a communist," he says.
Consequently, zoning ordinances - and state-mandated comprehensive plans - have gathered dust on many occasions as planning decisions were made by local governments.
Franklin County Administrator Macon Sammons says his experience has been that some Virginia localities emphasize planning and zoning, and some don't.
Distinctively rural Franklin County is going through the first complete update of its comprehensive plan since 1985. To stay ahead, Sammons and Planning Director Tim Krawczel say the county must make planning a priority.
Franklin County is one of the fastest-growing localities outside the "urban crescent": The population around Smith Mountain Lake increased by almost 50 percent in the previous decade, and Wal-Mart has plans to build a superstore just outside Rocky Mount. Roanoke Gas Co. may extend a gas line down U.S. 220 toward Rocky Mount, opening the door to increased business, residential and commercial development.
"It's really changed in the Smith Mountain Lake area over the last 10 years," says Lorraine Bowles, a Salem native who lives on the Franklin County side of the lake. "The weekend traffic is really a problem."
Tick ... tick ... tick ... goes the growth time bomb.
So, the county has embarked upon an extensive process to update its comprehensive plan. The update is titled: "Inventing Franklin County's Future Today."
The Planning Department created a survey that was sent to all 20,000 homes in the county; more than 3,000 were returned.
Results showed that two of the highest public priorities were preserving Franklin County's rural character and creating industrial jobs.
Therein lies the balancing act for elected officials.
"The conflict is where do you draw the line? We know we want to grow, but how much?" says Carthan Currin, the general manager of the Comfort Inn off U.S. 220 in Rocky Mount. The governor recently appointed Currin to a regional economic advisory council.
Currin's question and other factors place a greater emphasis on more aggressive land-use planning across the state, says Michael Chandler, a planning consultant for the Institute for Community Resource Development at Virginia Tech.
Chandler is a member of Blacksburg Town Council, so he has the distinction of advising local governing bodies on the need for more extensive planning while serving as an elected official.
"Planning has come a long way in the past 15 years," he says. "But decisions still come down to the elected official. What we lack is the courage, the vision and the persistence to articulate a stronger position. We've got to be able to look a developer in the face and say 'It's not in our best interest to do that.'"
Chandler, Eric Kelly, an expert in rural development at Iowa State University, and other planning specialists contacted for this series list many of the same reasons elected officials don't make more use of planning and zoning guidelines: politics; the officials lack of input in the creation of land use plans; no multijurisdictional cooperation; and pressure from developers and constituents who are resistant to change.
"Change scares most of us," Chandler says. "But if we take the high road most of the time, we've got to move in the right direction."
Planning and zoning regulations are becoming more prevalent, Chandler says, fueled by the fear of cookie-cutter sprawl development that eats up rural land and the costs associated with widespread residential growth that generates the need for more public services.
It's happening in pockets throughout the New River and Roanoke valleys.
Residents of Roanoke County's Back Creek community are trying to find a way to save one of only two dairy farms left in the county, while allowing for road improvement that will ease traffic problems created by residential growth.
Botetourt County credits planning for making its record growth manageable.
In 1990, the county hired Chuck Supan, who did environmental assessments for the Virginia Department of Transportation for 15 years, as planning and zoning administrator.
Supan's job is to make sure that land uses remain consistent with the county's comprehensive plan. He said business owners are equally concerned with making sure that the county is developed properly.
"Most companies now are more image-conscious about where their company is located and what the community is like," Supan says.
Plans can't stop growth
Comprehensive plans, mandated by state law since 1980, serve as a planning guideline for localities. But the plan, even if it includes rigid goals to sustain growth, doesn't mean a thing if corresponding zoning ordinance regulations aren't in place, Chandler says.
"Comprehensive plans are nothing without implementation," he said. "People have to realize that plans can be precise without being constrictive."
Another problem with comprehensive plans: Many of their elements are outdated, sometimes before the ink used to print them is dry.
Roanoke County's 1986 plan included growth distribution estimates for its planning districts. Back Creek's population was expected to go from 1,936 in 1983 to 2,866 in 2003. The estimate was off by about 10 years: Back Creek's population reached 2,700 in 1990, says John Hartley, the county's assistant planning director.
In the Bonsack area, the population was expected to grow from 1,903 in 1983 to 5,668 in 2003. But the growth hasn't happened. In 1990, Bonsack's population was 2,847, Hartley says.
To date, the county has not formally addressed the inaccuracies by changing the comprehensive plan to limit growth in Back Creek or to provide a plan for services there, Hartley says.
Planning specialists say inaccuracies can be dealt with as long as a solid plan mirrors a strong zoning ordinance.
Richard Collins, director of the Institute for Environmental Negotiation at the University of Virginia, says comprehensive plans help to raise civic awareness of people who participate because they require citizens to meet and think about their community.
"Plans should provide the framework and standards to evaluate the day-to-day" questions that come before counties," he says. But when market forces and developers' wishes are in conflict with the plan, "the plan should prevail. It should steer the market forces that by themselves are considered harmful because ... they consider only the buyer and seller.
"If, over the long run, it becomes apparent that there's lots of demand to rezone an area, then that can be taken into consideration when the plan's revised. But it shouldn't be revised at each planning commission meeting when an issue comes up.
"The advantage [of a plan] is it gives you the framework to get away from the worst kind of ad hoc decision-making."
But in many instances, the plan can't compete with polished presentations and emotional public testimony that occur during many planning decisions made by local governments.
Franklin County faced one of those tough decisions recently. Rockydale Quarries Inc. sought a special-use permit to operate a rock-mining business on Jacks Mountain near Smith Mountain Lake.
Because of several lawsuits, the battle over Rockydale's request went on for six years before the Board of Supervisors made its decision. In front of a large and emotional crowd, the board granted Rockydale's permit.
The county Planning Commission had recommended that the board deny the request. One of its reasons for the recommendation: A quarry is incompatible with other land uses in the Jacks Mountain community set forth in the comprehensive plan.
Several of the quarry's proponents said Franklin County's continuing growth merits the need for a quarry and should take precedence over the plan's guidelines.
In the end, it did.
Tim Krawczel says the comprehensive plan "just can't be used to stop growth."
"What can we say now that we'll know for sure will happen in the next 50 years?" he says. "I think comprehensive plans are there to be amended, but the amendment should always be debated."
'Little Big Horn' theory
The growth issues that face local counties aren't going unnoticed.
As part of the information-gathering for this series, the Roanoke Times & World-News held a round-table discussion on development in the rural areas around Roanoke. Seventeen people with various backgrounds were invited, and 17 people showed up. For two hours the debate was healthy and, at times, spirited.
Several of the more emotional exchanges took place between David Reemsnyder, president of Snyder-Hunt, a large development company based in Blacksburg, and Randi Lemmon, town manager of Pembroke in Giles County and a private land-planning consultant. Lemmon is a former employee of the New River District Planning Commission, and lived in New England when that region faced many of the issues facing this area today.
On local government and the role it plays, they had this to say;
Reemsnyder: "The root cause of what happens is people. If people wanted stacked condos, that's what we'd go build. But people want 'five, four and a door' ... that's five windows on the top, four windows on the bottom and a door - a two-story house on a small lot. That's the prevalent desire. And as long as people want that, someone's going to try to find a way to fill that need. It's the capitalistic way we have in this country."
Lemmon: "The thing that struck me, looking back to when I was in rural Connecticut, was that all of the ills that had been overcome were being repeated here. This area didn't seem to want to learn from many of the mistakes there. What we're seeing is strip development along rural roads, requiring school buses to stop on major arterial roads like U.S. 460, a four-lane divided highway. School buses have to stop on those roads with trucks and all kinds of stuff behind them because we allow cookie-cutter development.
"We're discouraging clustering. In fact, we don't want concentrated development. It's almost mandatory sprawl development. The cost is going to eat us alive. I think we need to learn from the areas that have seen how this has affected them and changed their zoning ordinances to encourage more sustainable growth patterns."
Roanoke County Supervisor Bob Johnson, one of two elected officials who participated in the round table: "Our board tried for a policy that would have required five-acre minimum lots in Catawba, and we were called communist. As far as legislating or having government set those standards, I think you do what your citizens expect and need. When you get beyond that, leadership will get you holes in the back while you're out in front of the pack."
Roanoke County attempted to set a minimum size on lots in rural and scenic Catawba to try to negate high-density subdivisions. Landowners cried foul, expressing their desire to be able to do whatever they want to with their property.
Later in the discussion, Johnson, referring to those constituent desires, said: "Now comes the pressure. What does government do? Government reacts. Or somebody will take your place and they will act for you."
Growth? What growth?
With talk about how the Roanoke and New River valleys continue to lag way behind the economic growth in Charlotte and the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, Debbie Kendall, a planner for Bedford County, says the idea of future population growth here has left some scratching their heads.
"We're talking about managing growth when for so long it's been 'There's no growth here.' We're switching issues all of a sudden. It's just reached a point at which it's staring us in the face."
"I'm an optimist, but the clock is ticking," says Mike Chandler, the Blacksburg councilman and planning consultant. "We need to actively invent our futures through land use planning."
Says Macon Sammons, the Franklin County administrator: "I think we have work to do in a number of our jurisdictions to improve our development standards ... for the good of all of us. For our region."
But can politics and an instilled way of life be altered to fit?
Reemsnyder offered this opinion during the round table:
"People don't want to give up their three cars. They don't want to give up the serene 15-minute drive home to unwind rather than just walk across the street up an elevator and into their condo. It's a tough one. Intellectually, we can design better systems. But just because we can design them doesn't mean they'll play in Peoria, or Rocky Mount, or Blacksburg or anyplace else."
Staff writer Ron Brown contributed to this report.
by CNB