Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 27, 1993 TAG: 9309030388
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Indeed, for a region characterized by its natural beauty, the parkway is both a gateway and a defining feature.
This is why the controversy over building subdivisions on what is now farmland adjacent to the parkway in Roanoke County is more than a local squabble. It is an issue of consequence to the entire valley, to Western Virginia and to all those who travel on the parkway each year.
Yet it is an issue that will be decided on a mostly local basis, in the context of what development already has occurred in Southwest Roanoke County, what development is possible given the availability of public services and what development the property owners want on what is, after all, their land.
There is a danger the larger context will be lost.
Parts of the parkway, according to the Roanoke County administrator's ad hoc Vista Committee, are critical to lending the drive along the road its sweeping beauty. Among these is a pasture that breaks a claustrophobic wall of trees on both sides of the road with a lovely knoll rising on the north side of the parkway and spreading into a semicircular bowl along the south.
These two tracts are a small part of the Beasley property that Boone, Boone & Loeb proposes to subdivide and develop. The entire development plan has been controversial, with neighboring residents protesting that it would compromise the rural flavor they sought when they moved into the county. But the fate of these two pieces of land carries a larger significance.
They sit right on the parkway, offering a view that is both handsome and impossible to screen from the road. They also comprise one of 11 ``critical views'' in Roanoke County identified by the Vista Committee as particularly important to the viewshed from the parkway.
On this committee sit developers as well as preservationists. In identifying these vistas, surely the group has implied a need to preserve at least some of them.
Ideally, the knoll and the bowl would be set aside, preserved from building of any kind. To do this, they might have to be purchased by the county - or by some organization such as Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway, a volunteers' group committed to preserving the parkway's integrity but currently lacking in funds.
Practically, the county has been trying to restrict density and set building standards to mitigate the impact of what is viewed as almost inevitable development. For, even without a zoning change, limited residential development is permitted on the agricultural land.
In any event, if there is a time to go slow and a place to err on the side of preservation, this is it.
Lawyers and officials cite public services that are rapidly becoming available to Southwest County, ticking off development that already has occurred. They note that state laws are heavily weighted toward landowners' rights to develop their property. All of which is relevant in the county generally.
But no one should lose sight of the central issue in this case: the parkway's uniqueness. This is not a simple matter of economic development versus preservation. The parkway itself is a major economic-development asset, as important to the future growth of the county's tax base as any new subdivision.
Travelers must expect, when the parkway runs through an urban area such as the Roanoke Valley, that the vistas won't always be pristine. But the parkway is not only a national treasure. It is also part of an attribute that sets the county and region above many others: the striking presence of natural beauty amid urban development.
County officials have recognized the value of this asset in supporting Explore Park as a centerpiece of their economic development plan, and Explore is tied closely to the parkway.
Understand: This is just one skirmish in what promises to be a series of development battles. Whatever the outcome, there is a significant lesson to be learned. The National Park Service, which oversees the parkway, has no preservation plan to protect its view- scape. The county has no plan for greenways to protect its natural beauty. Other localities in the Roanoke Valley and surrounding areas have no means of influencing actions that affect all of the parkway, though they are being played out in the county alone.
In other words, the county, the region, the state and the nation have found themselves with an embarrassingly small arsenal to fight threats to the integrity of a unique asset that, once debased, cannot be restored.
At the least, the current struggle over a few plots shows the need for a regional planning consortium to develop a protection plan for the parkway, along with the legal tools to give it teeth and the funding to give it heft.
by CNB