ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 30, 1995 TAG: 9601020157
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: RINER
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
Riner, the traditional farming community between Christiansburg and Floyd County, is experiencing growth pains - again.
This time it's a conflict between recently arrived suburban homeowners and a proposed commercial development within sight of their new homes.
The commercial development?
A farm-supply store with diesel fuel pumps.
Raymond Schaeffer is among those unhappy about Xpress Market Inc.'s request to rezone 5.6 acres along Virginia 8 beside the Lawrence subdivision to general business status.
Over the past two months, Schaeffer and his neighbors have spoken out before the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors, which should vote on the rezoning request Jan. 8.
Residents worry that the proposed farm-supply store and medical offices eventually will develop into a de facto truck stop.
"It's crazy to build this type of building right out in front of these beautiful homes," Schaeffer said.
Before moving to Lawrence four months ago, Schaeffer said he and his wife, Cindy, invested $35,000 to buy their five-acre lot and $250,000 to build a Victorian-style home. As a home builder himself, Schaeffer said he's not against commercial growth.
It is the location that bothers him, and the way the Lawrence lots were sold. "I was misled as to what was going to be done with this land," Schaeffer said.
He said he was told the development next door would be a "discreet" professional center, not a diesel-fuel-selling hardware store.
Randy Gardner, a partner in The Riner Group, which developed Lawrence subdivision, said he was involved in the sale of virtually every lot. Though some were subsequently resold, all initial buyers were told the adjacent land would be developed as a business property.
"People have a very short memory," Gardner said.
Aside from aesthetics and not-in-my-back-yard sentiments, Lawrence homeowners have cited safety and environmental issues as major concerns. The proposed entrance to the farm-supply store is at the end of a dangerous curve, resident Jim Snyder noted, and a proposed deceleration lane would make it difficult for Lawrence residents to pull out onto Virginia 8 safely.
Steve Conrad, for one, worries about the safety of children in the neighborhood if the business draws big trucks in right next door. Traffic congestion is a concern for other residents, too, who note the county is seeking to buy 50 acres right across Virginia 8 and behind Auburn High and Middle Schools for future school expansion projects.
One of the factors driving the push for new schools - the first of which will be a new Riner elementary school to open by September 1997 - is crowded classrooms caused by residential growth in the area.
And James Harvey, another Lawrence subdivision resident, is concerned about the possibility of contamination of the county Public Service Authority well that serves the subdivision and the schools. It is located downhill and across Virginia 8 from the proposed site of diesel fuel pumps at the farm-supply store. Harvey circulated a petition in the neighborhood and to a few nearby homes. Twenty-five people signed, representing all the Lawrence subdivision homes, Harvey said. The neighborhood doesn't have an organized homeowners association.
The Riner Group, a partnership of Gardner, Carl McNeil and John Turman, developed Lawrence and two other Riner-area subdivisions this decade: Ridgeway Farms Estates and Lucas Estates. Gardner and McNeil also have developed a fourth subdivision nearby, Childress Estates.
Turman, president of a lumber company that bears his family's name, is also president of Xpress Market Inc., which bought the 5.6 acres adjacent to the Lawrence subdivision from The Riner Group for $75,000 in October 1992, according to county real-estate records. Xpress Market also operates the nearby Riner Food Center.
Work on the 20-lot Lawrence subdivision started in 1994. Today it has 11 homes, plus another home at its entrance with Virginia 8 that predates it. All but two of the 20 lots have been sold, and one of those is under contract, according to real-estate records and Gardner.
The Xpress Market controversy echoes another land-use dispute earlier this year in nearby Childress. In that case, residents of Lucas Estates subdivision got up in arms about plans to relocate a sawmill to a pasture behind their neighborhood. The residents, many of them newcomers who had built their dream homes in Lucas Estates, worried about logging trucks, noise, sawdust and the potential ruin of the peace and quiet they'd spent thousands of dollars to buy. After a public hearing in March that drew more than 100 people, the Board of Supervisors voted 6-0 to deny a special-use permit request by S&S Farms Inc., which wanted to move its sawmill from nearby Fairview Church Road.
In the current case, Xpress Market wants to build a farm-supply store and medical offices on about a third of the 5.6 acres. It is asking for a rezoning for the entire tract to general-business status for "additional future uses." Lawrence residents and others are leery of that. Montgomery County's zoning ordinance permits 19 different uses in the general business district, only four of which require a special-use permit and public review and comment. The bulk of uses, including a shopping center, an hotel, an auto repair shop and a restaurant, can be pursued with only an administrative review of site plans by the county planning staff.
Stanley Moran, the secretary/treasurer of Xpress Market Inc., said a petition placed at the Riner Food Center gained more than 200 signatures in favor of the new farm store. He said his corporation is working with a Lawrence subdivision resident to develop a landscaping plan for a buffer of trees along Tuckahoe Drive, the subdivision's only street. Before a November public hearing, Xpress Market made a legally binding offer to plant the trees.
When the rezoning request returns to the Board of Supervisors Jan. 8, the board will review information from the Virginia Department of Transportation on the deceleration lane, and from the PSA on the well-safety issue.
The supervisors also may hear again from Lawrence residents. Harvey, who built the second home in the subdivision in September 1994 when he relocated to the area because of a job transfer, said its rural beauty, combined with its proximity to Christiansburg, is what attracted him.
"It's quiet and nice and kind of countrified and not too far from Wal-Mart, if you know what I mean," he said. "If I'd a wanted to live next door to Wal-Mart, I'd of bought next door to it."
LENGTH: Long : 119 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. & 2. Raymond Schaeffer (left) likes the view fromby CNBhis house in Riner just the way it is, so he's not excited about a
proposed business that would be built at the bottom of the hill.
Schaeffer only recently had his home built atop the hill (below).
GENE DALTON/Staff
3. map - Proposed 5.6 acre rezoning site.