THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 2, 1996 TAG: 9601020061
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN JOLLY DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: EASTVILLE LENGTH: Long : 119 lines
Ask anybody in Northampton County what they envision for their community's future. Most will have a large and growing list of improvements they want, and one stunning example of what they don't want.
They don't want Northampton to become another Virginia Beach. Suburban sprawl would destroy the land, the water and the personal relationships that country residents treasure. But Northampton's zoning laws won't protect the county's rural character, say local planners.
``People see something here they like,'' said Denard Spady, a farmer who is also executive director of Citizens for a Better Eastern Shore and chairman of the county Planning Commission. ``We could lose the thing we have that most people want.''
That's why Spady and a handful of other concerned locals have spent seven years, and hundreds of volunteer hours, rewriting Northampton's zoning ordinance. They studied and shaped the proposed zoning law line by line, hoping to turn it into a tool the county can use to manage growth.
``It's a good exercise to go through for citizen types like me,'' said Spady. Work sessions to discuss the complex zoning ordinance began in 1988, with Spady and fellow committee members - all laymen - learning the ropes as they progressed. It was a tedious process.
``In the long run, the community profits when you have people who will do that,'' said Spady. Now the ordinance has been released for public scrutiny. The Planning Commission sponsored four ``information sessions'' in recent months to talk about the proposed law, but the meetings were sparsely attended.
Spady hopes that public discussion of the proposed law will expand so that any flaws can be corrected.
``All this stuff is not really cut in stone,'' he said about the new ordinance. ``You have to make it work for the community.''
On Wednesday , said Spady, the Planning Commission will discuss a schedule for enacting the new ordinance. It may hold additional discussions to get more input from residents. Then the Planning Commission and board of supervisors will either hold separate public hearings on the new law, or have a joint public hearing.
Spady hopes that citizens will speak up before then.
``A formal public hearing is not the format for a good give and take,'' he said.
Four of the county's six members of the board of supervisors are newly elected, so they need to be briefed on the proposed law, said Spady. The board will eventually vote on any change.
Northampton's existing zoning laws were enacted in 1983. Spady describes them as ``pretty basic,'' designed to establish standard post-World War II zoning - the type of zoning associated with America's 50 years of suburban growth. Under this type of law, commercial, residential and agricultural land uses are separated.
Much of Virginia Beach can be used as an example of this approach, said Spady. It tends to create subdivisions where people are surrounded by development, but have to drive to a commercial zone to get a quart of milk, he said.
Pre-war land-use patterns naturally grouped homes, shops, churches and schools into relatively small communities, leaving most of the surrounding land open for agriculture and recreation. Northampton's proposed zoning ordinance strives to revive that pattern by funneling growth into rural villages and community development areas near Cape Charles, Cheriton, Eastville, Nassawadox and Exmore.
It's a back-to-the-future approach that Spady and others hope will revitalize Northampton's small towns, and make it easier to eventually provide more local residents with water and sewer services. ``I would hope that the new ordinance would be a better tool to get us where we want to go,'' Spady said.
The move to rethink Northampton's zoning began in the mid-1980s when big developers discovered the county's virgin waterfront. At that time, one housing unit could be built on a 30,000-square-foot lot.
Reacting to the threat of uncontrolled growth, officials raised the minimum lot size to 5 acres. In theory, the large lot size would prevent dense development. But before that change became law, waterfront farmers rushed to subdivide their land, if only on paper, so they could claim the grandfathered right to sell smaller lots.
Five-acre lots proved to be too expensive for most people to buy, too big to maintain and hard to sell. And thanks to the hastily replatted shoreline, strip development of the waterfront continued unabated.
``We tried small-lot zoning. We tried large-lot zoning. Neither one of them really works,'' said Spady. ``We have to do something different.''
Under the proposed ordinance, a housing unit can be placed on a 20,000-square-foot lot in most districts. But in the least dense, conservation district, only one dwelling is allowed per 50 acres.
In an agricultural district - most of the county is zoned agricultural - the density is one dwelling per five acres, with a minimum 20,000-square-foot lot. In other zones, the density goes as high as one unit per half-acre. The ordinance requires builders to cluster development and set aside open space.
``My personal feeling is that one unit per five acres in an agricultural district is too dense in the long run,'' said Spady. But, he said, the Planning Commission didn't want to be perceived as closing off growth by lowering current densities.
There are some problems the proposed ordinance doesn't solve. Nothing in the new law would prevent strip development of the waterfront. There is no protection for the region's groundwater recharge zone along Route 13, and there is no adequate definition of the term ``airport.''
But the proposed ordinance is easily amendable, said Spady. When solutions to these problems are devised, they can be dropped into the document without having to rewrite the entire proposal.
``Life is not a static situation,'' he said. ``Things like shoreline preservation measures are not there now. But there's a place to put them in the framework of the ordinance.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by JIM WALKER/ The Virginian-Pilot
Farmer Denard Spady, head of Northampton County's planning
commission, has taken part in a seven-year effort to rewrite the
county's zoning ordinance. ``People see something here they like,''
he said. ``We could lose the thing we have that most people want.''
Color staff map
Area Shown: eastville
KEYWORDS: ZONING LAND EASTERN SHORE DEVELOPMENT PROPOSED by CNB