HIGH COURT TO HEAR RESIDENTS HEGIRA HOUSE CASE APPEAL ACCEPTED

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 6, 1993                   TAG: 9303070046
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
HIGH COURT TO HEAR RESIDENTS HEGIRA HOUSE CASE APPEAL ACCEPTED
The Virginia Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case in which a group of Roanoke residents is fighting plans by a drug treatment home to move into their neighborhood.
Plans for Hegira House to move from Second Street Southwest to a larger plot on Andrews Road Northwest have been on hold since last May, when Roanoke Circuit Judge Roy Willett upheld the city's zoning approval for the relocation.
Residents appealing Willett's decision say the move would decrease the value of their homes and increase crime in their upper-middle-class neighborhood.
Most of the issues raised on appeal deal with procedural questions in a complicated case that was bounced back and forth between board meetings and courtrooms.
"It's more technical than substance," City Attorney Wilburn Dibling said of the appeal.
However, the Andrews Road residents cleared one hurdle when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The high court hears arguments in less than a fourth of the cases submitted for appeal.
Arelia Langhorne, a Lynchburg attorney who represents the residents, did not return telephone calls Thursday and Friday.
In a case that is already two years old, Roanoke's Board of Zoning Appeals has been sued by both sides - first by Hegira House when it refused to rehear the issue after deadlocking 2-2, then by neighborhood residents when its full membership voted 3-2 to approve the move.
Issues raised on appeal include whether Willett erred in: ruling the board acted properly in using a consent order to conduct a rehearing; upholding the board's decision to grand a special exception and variance for the home; upholding the decision when the board failed to make findings of fact; and upholding a second roll-call vote that reversed the first decision in which a board member mistakenly cast the wrong vote.
Officials for Hegira House, which operates an intensive, group-therapy home for 24 drug and alcohol abusers, say they need to expand. The remote, 13-acre site and large house on the 1900 block of Andrews Road is the ideal site, they say.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case as early as next month, and a decision is expected by summer.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB