ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, September 25, 1996 TAG: 9609250045
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PULASKI
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Despite protests by neighboring landowners worried about storm drainage, a 60-unit apartment project has gotten the go-ahead from Pulaski County.
The Silvanway Apartments project near Fairlawn was before the county Planning Commission for an unprecedented nine months before it was approved, and the decision was appealed to the Board of Supervisors.
Last month, after hearing from developer Mark Wiley and several of the landowners, supervisors Chairman Joe Sheffey urged both sides to try to work out a compromise or come back to the board this month if they could not resolve the matter.
Apparently, neither side wanted to take the first step.
"He has not approached us to talk about easements," landowner Billy J. Watson told the supervisors Monday night. He and his wife, Glenna, had appealed the Planning Commission's decision to the board.
"I have been more than willing to talk to anyone who contacted me," Wiley said.
That left the board with a difficult decision to make, Sheffey noted. He said Wiley had responded to any number of concerns associated with the project to make whatever improvements were needed "but I still have a concern about water."
Watson and other property owners believed that drainage from the project could erode or contaminate their land downstream. "There's no way it can keep from concentrating," Watson said of the runoff. "I just don't believe a developer has the right to transform someone else's property."
Wiley had support from professional engineers who said the holding pond they had designed for the project would release water in such small amounts that drainage would not be a problem. "In terms of quality control, this facility is the most restrictive that I have designed in my 11 years of practice," Ray Varney, an engineer with Anderson & Associates Inc., said in a letter to the board.
Supervisor Charles Cook shared Sheffey's concern. Cook had visited the neighborhood east of Virginia 60 (Belspring Road) in the Cloyd District where the project is to be built. "I don't think we should make profit at the expense of other people," he said.
Supervisor Bruce Fariss, who also serves on the Planning Commission, moved approval of the site plan based, he said, on Wiley's efforts to satisfy every question raised. The board heard what the engineers said about it, he said. "You have to either accept that or not."
"You're not only voting on this issue, you're voting on future development in the county, because this is not the only place in the county where we will have runoff," Fariss said. "The developers have taken the opportunity to address every concern that has been raised."
Jerry White seconded Fariss' motion, and Sheffey and Cook voted against it. That left the swing vote to Frank Conner, who voted in favor of the site plan although he said "some of these people [opposing it] are my friends."
The Watsons shook hands with Cook and Sheffey before leaving the meeting.
The project is expected to take 21/2 years to complete, with 26 to 28 of the apartment units being completed each year.
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