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Developers and landowners in one area of East Lexington will have to wait to learn exactly how much land they can work with.
At a meeting last week that ran past 11 p.m., the Lexington City Council tabled a set of amendments that would have defined a developable area along the bluffs above the Maury River.
The proposed amendments – which were expected to get council approval after being approved by the city Planning Commission in January – were not even put to a vote at the council’s Feb. 19 meeting.
Council member Jim Gianniny moved that the group adopt the proposal, but his motion failed to receive a second.
“Everybody played it pretty close to the vest,” Council Member Bob Lera said. After a series of errors in parliamentary procedure, debate over other items on the agenda dragged on, and discussion on the amendments didn’t start until about 10 p.m.
Lera said the council seemed reluctant to act hastily on the issue.
“It’s dead for now,” he said.
The proposed amendments would have limited the land areas that could be used in a proposed planned-unit development – defined as a subdivision of property that is specifically planned for future development – by excluding natural features prevalent in the East Lexington bluffs area above the south side of the Maury. Those include features that might hinder construction, such as flood plains, streams, wetlands, sinkholes and certain slopes.
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| Natural features like the slope seen here make development an issue in East Lexington. (MICHAEL MORELLA/The Rockbridge Report) |
where a lot of natural features – sinkholes, flood plains, slopes – make development an issue in East Lexington
Bill Blatter, the city’s director of planning and development, said that according to figures he received from Chris Nash, a developer from North Carolina with interest in the East Lexington area, the proposed amendments would have reduced the total number of possible units by one third.
Jean Dunbar, chair of the Planning Commission, sees the set of amendments as a logical step for a city like Lexington. According to an agreement with Rockbridge County, the city is unable to annex new land in its surrounding areas.
Dunbar says the Planning Commission’s job is to make sure that the land Lexington does have is developed responsibly. She says that density for land within the city should be based on terrain that can actually be built upon rather than just raw land.
Dunbar says the amendments would have given developers a logical upper limit to their development and would have provided City Council with a way to calculate that limit.
“It would be useful to have a tool in the toolbox,” Dunbar said.
Like Dunbar, Blatter says the amendments should have greater scope, possibly including all of Lexington’s residential zoning districts. Blatter sees the current proposed amendments as reasonable given the natural features in the East Lexington bluffs area.
Andrew McThenia, who owns land in East Lexington, also supports the idea behind the Planning Commission’s amendments, but believes they don’t do enough for local developers. At a public hearing on Feb. 5, McThenia said that by effectively reducing the number of allowable units, the proposed amendments would actually destroy flexibility rather than enhance it.
Lera, who served a term on the Planning Commission before he was elected to City Council in November, said his decision was swayed by new information brought before the council by Blatter.
But Lera says the solution lies in supporting the will of Lexington’s residents. For him, there is no hurry.
“I really couldn’t care less if we took another week or another month or another two months,” he said.
Produced by
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