Supervisors approve Comp Plan revisions

After nearly two years of workshops and discussions the Greene County Comprehensive Plan has been updated.

The Greene County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to adopt it following a public hearing – and some raised voices -- at its regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday, June 8.

While it is advisory in nature, the state-mandated Comprehensive Plan will guide the County’s actions regarding land use, economy, physical features and quality of life in Greene for years to come.

The State requires that Comprehensive Plans be reviewed at least every five years. Greene’s was last reviewed in 2003, and this time around, there was some heated discussion about land use.

In particular, about the county’s growth area, which planners would make smaller.

According to the recommendations submitted to the Board by the Greene County Planning Commission: “Increases in residential development are correlated to a loss of acreage in farms and forestland. This makes it clear that the land use goals outlined in the comprehensive plan will have a direct impact on the health and viability of the agricultural industry in the county, as well as the associated rural identity expressed by many citizens.

However, “There is not much agriculture industry in Greene County, period,” said Larry Snow, Greene County Commissioner of Revenue. “We have very few people in Greene County who make a living farming. We have people who farm, but it’s more of a hobby.”

In addition, “The wish for a rural identity expressed by many citizens” refers to the citizens – about 30 of Greene County’s near 18,000 – who attended the planning workshops held over the course of almost the last two years.

Based to some degree on the input of those citizens, the Planning Commission recommended concentrating growth in compact, mixed use places and focusing residential growth into designated areas.

According to the proposed update, such a plan “corresponds well with Greene County’s goal of increasing the number of jobs and commercial development.”

As a result, the county’s planning commissioners recommended shrinking Greene’s growth area – a move that some who have been holding on to their land with an eye toward future sale or development found objectionable.

The Scheuermann family, owners of The Highlands Golf Park on U.S. 29 North in Ruckersville, hired John J. “Butch” Davies of Davies, Barrell, Will, Lewellyn & Edwards PLC to represent them when planning commissioners removed their property from the growth area.

The Scheuermann “property lends itself extremely well to nodal development,” Davies told the Board. “On the north end I would suggest it provides a unique opportunity for business development.”

Davies also pointed out that the Scheuermann property also provides county planners with the opportunity for the roads parallel to U.S. 29 they say they want.

But Gretchen Scheuermann, who also spoke to the Board on her family’s behalf, got to the heart of the matter.

“We’ve had a commercial business on that property for 13 or 14 years,” Scheuermann said. “If we put the land up for sale we want to market it as a potential commercial property. My family has a lot invested in the land, and we rely on its value for our future.”

According to the proposed plan: “Concentrating growth also helps meet the county’s fiscal objective of providing municipal services and infrastructure without incurring an unreasonably high tax burden for residents of the county.

“A comprehensive survey of research on providing local government services around the country found significant cost differences between compact and low-density land use patterns. On average, compact growth cost 15 percent less for local and state transportation infrastructure, 8-15 percent less for provision of water and sewer service. Even emergency services and law enforcement operate more efficiently when officers and staff are able to travel shorter distances between places.”

In the end, the Board did not follow the commissioners’ recommendation to remove that land from the growth area – and nor did it follow the commissioners’ recommendation to remove all of Carroll Morris’s land on U.S. 33 East.

There was also objection to the commissioners’ suggestion for the establishment of three areas within the growth area that focus growth in the most intense way. Those areas would be: a mixed use village center in Ruckersville; one at the Corner Store in Ruckersville; and one in Stanardsville.

The fundamental framework for these three areas calls for an approximately 80 percent non-residential and 20 percent residential split. Within the non-residential areas of these centers, a variety of uses are appropriate, primarily commercial and office. Appropriate residential units vary from apartments, including apartments above stores, to single family homes.

But Jay Willer, executive vice-president of Blue Ridge Homebuilders Association, described those three mixed use development areas “very small geographies.

“There is to be a mix of commercial and residential, with walkability,” Willer said. “My concern is you are putting a very strong emphasis, if not a requirement, on meeting those needs in a density of six units per acre. We can talk all we want about getting people to move to those locations, but people who choose to live in townhouses are going to be young couples who want proximity to Charlottesville, not Stanardsville.

“So you’re creating a scenario that is useful on paper and may meet the state requirements but that the market simply will not support,” said Willer. “If the market doesn’t support it you don’t get the density in those areas; you don’t get the population to support the commercial you want in those areas. I caution you about how you layer those requirements on those defined areas.”

Nonetheless, Andrea Wilkinson of the Ruckersville Citizens Council Lobby, pushed for development concentrated in those three areas.

And Jenny Dietzel, Greene County field agent for Piedmont Environmental Council, said she was disappointed in the update.

“You need to have a goal,” Dietzel said. “How much of Greene is to be saved in forest land? How much of Greene do we want to save in farming land? We will work with you on (developing a program for) the purchase of development rights, on promoting a voluntary conservation easement program.

Dietzel also told the Board it needed to push tourism, to “promote the Journey through Hallowed Ground and exploit the county’s Civil War heritage.”

But she did not say a word about working to find a location for the Greene County Fair, or the Battle of Stanardsville, both events that attract tourists, but stand to have no location.

A Comprehensive Plan is the basis for land development regulations and decisions, capital improvements, transportation, environmental and historic resource protection initiatives, new programs and decisions on the distribution of budget dollars to programs and agencies. The state mandates that it be updated every five years, at a minimum.