The VLW Blog

The latest lawsuit over development in Blacksburg concerns a proposed Sonic drive-in, according to the Roanoke Times. A company fighting to build a big-box retail store (think Wal-Mart) in the college town claims that local authorities rejected the Sonic as retribution for the company’s success in court. Blacksburg has a petition for appeal in the big-box case pending before the Supreme Court of Virginia.

By Peter Vieth

Add Front Royal to the list of Virginia localities where the Board of Zoning Appeals was accused of being too generous. Warren County Circuit Judge Dennis L. Hupp this week nullified a variance that would have allowed a tall addition to the Afton Inn in Front Royal, as reported by the Northern Virginia Daily. At a hearing, board members admitted that they found no unconstitutional hardship on the property owner to justify the variance.

A similar issue has the Staunton City Council at war with that city’s BZA.

The Supreme Court of Virginia, in a 2004 opinion, held that a BZA cannot grant a zoning variance unless the property would be useless without it. Nevertheless, it seems that zoning boards sometimes forget or disregard that strict standard to help a landowner with a beneficial project.

In Staunton, the circuit court is wrestling with whether the BZA is entitled to a lawyer at the expense of the city that haled the BZA into court. Judge Thomas H. Wood appointed William E. Shmidheiser III of Harrisonburg to represent the BZA. City Attorney Douglas Guynn has objected.

In the Front Royal litigation, it appears that the Virginia Municipal League arranged for the BZA to be represented by Charlottesville’s John W. Zunka.

By Peter Vieth

Bedford County Attorney Carl Boggess opines that the county is free to develop recreational facilities on a plot of land deeded in 1832 “to erect a poorhouse and work house forever.” As reported by the Roanoke Times, Boggess concludes that the word “forever” simply gives complete title.

In the back-and-forth battle between the Staunton City Council and the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals, a circuit judge now is poised to appoint a lawyer to represent the BZA at the expense of the city, which sued the BZA in the first place. The News Leader is keeping track of the action, where the city attorney now says that he will file a motion for reconsideration.

The underlying issues are whether the BZA violated state law in granting certain variances for landowners and what remedies the city has to address the situation. Since the city decided to bring the matter to circuit court, the city may end up having to pay the bills for its own lawyer and the lawyer for the BZA that it sued.

The Supreme Court of Virginia says that disgruntled neighbors can’t use the courts to blow the whistle on land use violations. The case comes from Roanoke, and the Times has details.

The plant was built in 1949 but in recent years has become a point of concern as residential development that has crept closer and closer to it. However, the stratagems the city attempted to use to authorize the plant’s removal ran afoul of Virginia Code § 15.2-2307 Justice Elizabeth B. Lacy wrote for a unanimous court in Alexandria City Council v. Mirant Potomac River LLC.

That statute generally prohibits localities from the impairment “the impairment of any vested right,” and that was precisely the effect of the city’s effort to remove the plant, Lacy wrote.

In the second case, the city attempted to block the subdivision of one parcel into two parcels that even in their subdivided state would have been larger than the typical site in an established neighborhood. Residents there objected because they feared the construction of “McMansions” out of scale with other homes.

The high court ruled, however, in Seymour v. City of Alexandria, that the city subdivision ordinance governed only the consistency of lots, not the type of structure that goes on them.