ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 25, 1997 TAG: 9702250129
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
Advocates of rural preservation in the growing Riner community won a victory Monday when the Montgomery County supervisors denied a plan to build 20 town houses.
The town houses were planned for 3.1 acres on Five Points Road off Virginia 8 near Auburn High School.
The supervisors' 5-0 vote against the proposal supported the Planning Commission's 5-4 vote last week to recommend denial of the request.
Supervisor Nick Rush was absent and Supervisor Joe Stewart abstained from voting. He had moved to table the decision for more information.
The developers could not overcome concerns about increased traffic and the appropriateness of town houses in a predominantly agricultural and single-family residential community.
``It just goes back to density. I just don't feel in my heart that the density is proper,'' said Supervisor Henry Jablonski, whose district includes the Riner community.
Jablonski, whose seat on the board is up for election in November, said he and other supervisors voted down a town house proposal in Riner in 1981 and that he still thought the multifamily dwellings were inappropriate for the community.
Jablonski said he could support the plan if Riner were a higher-density area, but he worried that ``if I support this that I would be setting a precedent'' that would open the door for similar projects.
The Riner Group's partners, developers Carl McNeil and Randy Gardner and lumber company president John Turman, wanted the land rezoned from agricultural to residential designation and to get a special-use permit to build the town houses. They saw the proposal as a medium-density housing project that took advantage of available and planned public utilities and did not take up much farm land - a continuing concern for Riner residents as development spreads from nearby Christiansburg.
But some Riner residents saw the town houses as the latest intrusion into their previously quiet, rural atmosphere. The town houses would be about a mile from a proposed 215-acre golf course and residential development that - if approved by the supervisors - could include up to 140 homes.
The property is adjacent to the Lawrence subdivision, which McNeil and Gardner developed, and also to Turman's Xpress Market, which the county rezoned for commercial use last year amid protests.
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