ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 8, 1996 TAG: 9603080073
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
Botetourt County has applied for rezoning of a 35-acre flood-prone tract in the town of Buchanan.
The county is acting on behalf of Meadville Forging Co., a Pennsylvania company considering the site for a new plant.
Jim Link, marketing manager for Meadville, said the company also is considering a site in a Pulaski County industrial park. The plant, wherever it's located, could employ as many as 75 people forging steel for the auto and mining-machinery industries.
Botetourt County Administrator Jerry Burgess said the county has an option to buy the land, but has not actually purchased it. Terms of the sale were unavailable. The county is requesting the rezoning with the permission of the current owner, Heriot Clarkson. The purchase will not be completed unless Meadville chooses the site.
The rezoning request will get a public hearing before the Buchanan Town Council at 7 p.m. Monday, when it likely will meet some opposition.
Clifford Hoppe, who lives near the site at U.S. 11 and Virginia 625, said the property frequently floods when the nearby James River is high. Hoppe fears that any development or filling on the land would make his own property more likely to flood.
The town Planning Commission twice recommended against rezoning the land from agricultural to industrial use, in 1990 and again in 1993, because of its tendency to flood. The second time, Town Council approved the rezoning anyway, but the owner failed to develop it within two years, so it reverted to its agricultural zoning.
Link said he was not aware the Planning Commission had opposed rezoning the land in the past, but he knew the land often flooded.
Plans for the Meadville plant, if it is built, put it in a corner of the land outside the 100-year flood plain, Burgess said. Any development on the land also must meet all Federal Emergency Management Agency requirements for the area.
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