DATE: Wednesday, September 17, 1997         TAG: 9709170487

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAC DANIEL, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   41 lines

CHESAPEAKE STALLS ZONING FOR DELAURA DEVELOPMENT

The City Council again delayed zoning changes for the controversial DeLaura property Tuesday.

In the meantime, developers were asked to slow down their building schedule to minimize the fiscal impact on the city.

Council members John M. de Triquet, Alan P. Krasnoff and Dalton S. Edge earlier failed to have the project rejected.

Tuesday's debate boiled down to whether the city could afford to approve DeLaura.

The proposed 320-home development on Clearfield Avenue would include free land to the city for a new fire station, a preserved historical home and a free 17-acre school site.

The school land is worth $970,000, but a new school that could be needed to handle the children from the development could cost about $10 million, and the city already has more than $100 million in school construction it cannot fund.

So the council voted 8-1 to postpone action on the matter until the council's Oct. 21 meeting.

Mayor William E. Ward asked the developers to agree to build with brick and on crawl spaces. And the council asked that the plan to build on 80 lots per year over four years be slowed down.

The Chesapeake Planning Commission in July recommended that the rezoning be denied, saying approval would violate the level-of-service policy designed to keep growth manageable.

But some on the council worried whether the policy was fairly applied in this case.

When the developers asked for the rezoning, nearby Crestwood Middle School was not yet at the enrollment limits.

But in the year since, the enrollment crossed the level-of-service threshold.

``I think when we tell any citizen that you do things A, B and C and you meet all those and then we disqualify you,'' said Vice Mayor John W. Butt, ``I think that creates a problem.'' KEYWORDS: CHESAPEAKE CITY COUNCIL

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