County Zoning Proposal Favors Highway Development

By DORIE SOUTHERN
Cape Charles Wave

December 3, 2013

Northampton County is holding public information meetings December 4 and 5 on proposed changes to the zoning ordinance. The changes do not apply to the Town of Cape Charles, but would impact Town residents and merchants.

The County wants to eliminate overlay districts, including the Town edge overlay intended to protect the entrance corridor to Cape Charles. The changes would create a new 2.5-mile Commercial District along Route 13 and Route 184 at  the Cape Charles stoplight.

Both the County and the Town are updating their comprehensive plans — the blueprints for community development, including economic development, education, and community services. The current comprehensive plans of both jurisdictions call for encouraging enterprise, development, and growth in towns. This would change to promote development on the highways outside of towns.

Northampton County Economic Director Charles McSwain acknowledges that both the County’s and the Town’s comprehensive plans call for driving commerce into towns and villages. “But the Comprehensive Plan is a living document,” he told the Wave, suggesting that it’s time to change it.

Meanwhile, the Cape Charles Planning Commission is reviewing the Town’s Comprehensive Plan and the Town Edge Overlay District, a product of the nearly forgotten 1991 Annexation Agreement between Cape Charles and Northampton County. But the Town Edge Overlay District will disappear if the new zoning ordinance is adopted.

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The Annexation Agreement states “that the Town and the Commission [on Local Government] have concerns about the potential impact to the existing business districts within the towns of Cape Charles and Cheriton caused by commercial development along the Virginia State Route 184 corridor and at the traffic light on U.S. Route 13.”

The County Comprehensive Plan states: “Most community workshop participants favored directing new development to existing towns where public services are available as a means of revitalizing existing towns and promoting compact development.”

The Comprehensive Plan also seeks to avoid strip-mall sprawl by having “commercial growth be centered in the existing towns. Commercial operations along the main U.S. Route 13 corridor will be discouraged, both to ensure that the towns remain economically viable and to keep U.S. Route 13 an efficient and safe corridor for local and through traffic.”

In response to plans by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel to build parallel tunnels and increase traffic volume, the Comprehensive Plan says, “The County opposes any efforts to develop an alternative limited-access highway connecting the CBBT to points north. Any such route would effectively destroy the County’s communities and our fragile environmental heritage.”

The County formed a Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee which last year conducted an economic survey funded by the National Association of Realtors. The telephone survey reported that respondents were dissatisfied with the state of the economy and employment opportunities in the County. The survey recommended increased development on Route 13.

Last year the County Board of Supervisors approved conclusions from a “Comprehensive Economic Development Plan” written by the Accomack-Northampton County Planning District Commission that call for increased development of property along Route 13.

Instead of encouraging development within towns, the County is trying to figure out how to provide wastewater infrastructure for commercial properties on the highway.

The information meetings are:

Wednesday, December 4,  7-10 p.m.
Occohannock Elementary School Cafeteria

Thursday, December 5, 7-10 p.m.
Kiptopeke Elementary School Cafeteria

Click here to access the County zoning ordinance.

An online option is now available for persons wishing to submit comments concerning the County Comprehensive Plan and their vision for the County’s future. To access the comment section, click here.

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Comments

2 Responses to “County Zoning Proposal Favors Highway Development”

  1. Keith Underhill on December 2nd, 2013 11:37 pm

    Until the county learns how to run the school system to teach, no one is going to move their family to the Shore. The restraints on new business are absurd. The county concentrates on keeping the administration funded. Everything else is second. How can the county survive when the school system and the county are the largest employer? It is like the snake feeding off its tail.

  2. Austin Davis on December 3rd, 2013 8:14 am

    Should the County government wish to cancel Annexation Agreement terms, they should be reminded that they could forthwith be sent a bill for any water, sewer, policing, for any services the Town provides within those areas, and for the debt service on improvements within or consequent from the Annexation Agreement. A legal contract (aka: Agreement) cannot be unilaterally cancelled piece by piece. In order to avoid paying off-shore black suits to come argue the matter in court, a first step might be to remind the County Supervisors supporting this notion that they might not want to be known as someone who would attempt such a reprehensible act. I, personally, think better of some of them.