THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 21, 1997 TAG: 9701210207
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MEREDITH COHN AND MAC DANIEL, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: 101 lines
During the last five months of emotional debate, backlash over Warrington Hall was hard to pinpoint.
But when looking at the neighborhood as a whole and the issues that concerned residents, this protest appeared to be both an outcry against this development and Chesapeake's rapid growth.
During the debate, residents accused the developer and city officials of killing property values and crowding already burdened streets and schools.
When their initial efforts failed, residents and a coalition of civic organizations tried to get the rezoning overturned by a citywide referendum.
Their protests ended Thursday when the effort failed to collect enough signatures.
The protests were a blow to developer Carroll Williamson, the Boston landscape architect behind Warrington Hall, which will be built on his family's farmland between Kempsville and Butts Station roads.
``When it comes to growth, I don't know if things are getting better,'' Williamson said Thursday.
``I think if there was a citywide moratorium on growth, that'd be another thing. But all a city like Chesapeake can do is either stop all building or try to do the best that you can in controlling it and making it sustainable and making it good development. And I feel like what I'm doing is sustainable and is good development.''
Williamson has long wanted to build Warrington Hall, a 127-acre development that he had rezoned from traditional zoning to a ``planned-unit development.''
Under its new zoning approved by the City Council, the development will mix condominiums, townhouses and $250,000 single-family houses with parks and convenience stores and offices - at about four homes per acre vs. two and a half under the site's previous zoning.
Unlike traditional housing, architectural designs - including front porches and brick sidewalks - will be the same throughout the development and contribute the neighborhood feel, according to city planners who endorsed the project.
For Williamson, it's a way to get people to stop using their cars; to help people re-connect with their neighbors; to create a small community within the larger.
He received much support for his efforts, including the unlikely recommendation of council gadfly Carl Burns, who said it was the best thing to ever happen to the city.
But residents who opposed the development saw only the density.
Residents said there was already a city park nearby and another wasn't needed. The commercial area of the development will die, they said, because people won't use it. A predicted 2,700 more cars a day would travel Kempsville Road, they said.
Some said Warrington Hall was just a means of Williamson making a name for himself. Others feared that the proposed townhouses in Warrington Hall would become a haven for low-income housing.
Kathleen Duncan, a resident of Kemps Crossing, told the council that ``maybe the PUD is a good idea for the city of Chesapeake, but not on that parcel of land.''
In many ways, according to Kemps Crossing resident Susan G. Bohannan, Warrington Hall can be seen as the straw that broke the neighborhood's back.
Bohannan, a Warrington Hall supporter, said her community had been relatively quiet about surrounding growth despite two huge developments being built nearby at Kempsville Road and Volvo Parkway and at Kempsville Road and Green Tree Road.
``I didn't hear this great big uproar or firestorm over those developments, and they're dumping people along Kempsville Road,'' said Bohannan. ``When we now get something that's a little bit new and different, that's when the uproar starts.''
Planners used computer models and information gathered from Chesapeake's other two planned-unit developments - Greenbrier and Riverwalk - to map out the number of cars and children that would come from Warrington Hall.
While the overall number of cars will increase - about 2,700 automobiles - the planned-unit development may produce fewer than the city average of 10 daily car trips per household, said city planners.
A network of sidewalks and nearby services is supposed to encourage residents to walk rather than drive. And the 180 senior housing units may reduce the commuters during rush hour, city planners said.
In this case, the Planning Department negotiated an agreement with Williamson that limits the number of cars entering area roads until improvements can be made. No more automobiles will travel on Kempsville or Butts Station roads than the number that would have been added by a traditional housing development, planners said.
A larger number of cars will result from planned commercial and office space within the community, but that problem will likely be eliminated after Williamson agreed to open them at the end of his five-year building plan.
Kempsville Road, the area's major thoroughfare, is slated for widening beginning in 1998 and ending in 2002. If the schedule is delayed, the shops will wait, according to Karen E. Shaffer, a planner who helped craft the agreement with Williamson. No plans are in the works to widen Butts Station Road, which residents from neighboring developments say already has a quarter-mile back-up during morning rush hour.
The number of students is expected to be slightly less than generated by a traditional community, she said, mostly because of the number of elderly apartments. Only one of the schools expecting to absorb more students from Warrington Hall, Crestwood Middle School, is operating over capacity. But the increase would be acceptable under guidelines approved by City Council, Shaffer said.
``The property has been zoned for a residential development since 1969, and under Virginia law, the property owner has the right to develop it,'' said Brent R. Nielson, the Planning Department director.
KEYWORDS: ZONING CHESAPEAKE PLANNED UNIT DEVELOPMENT
PLANNED COMMUNITY