FREDA Accelerates While Town Council Hits the Brakes

In a 5-0 vote to expedite the transformation of the Baymont Inn into an apartment complex aimed at servicing young professionals, the Front Royal Economic Development Authority (FREDA) determined that with the appropriate conditions, this is a worthy project and set it on a course to be considered by the Front Royal Town Council before the council’s next regular meeting. That very same day, Monday, May 6, in a work session that began at 7 p.m. in the Front Royal Town Hall at 102 East Main Street, the Town Council assessed a request from the applicant and owner of the Baymont Inn for a special use permit and delayed it for further examination to a June work session.

Town Council meets for a work session on Monday evening. Royal Examiner Photo Credits: Brenden McHugh.

Not everyone on the Town Council is in favor of the delay. Councilman Glenn Wood is in alignment with FREDA. He carefully delineated the benefits of this project for his fellow council members. One of the chief reasons this project is so exceptional is the opportunity it would afford young workers starting without large families in this community to live locally, enjoy the amenities of Front Royal while being close to their workplace, and keep the blood vessels of our workforce from being drained into a bedroom community like Winchester. Mayor Lori Cockrell heartily agreed with this point. Keeping our teachers in the school system locally is something she cares about deeply, perhaps partly because when she is not wearing the mayoral hat, she is known as having been a teacher herself.

However, there seems to be a bureau of reasons why this item requires more study, presented forcefully by Councilwoman Amber Morris, who did not receive an invitation to tour the proposed conversion site at Baymont Inn and would like the opportunity to do so before voting in favor of the special use permit. Is the housing truly going to be affordable for everyone? Tied to that, will the owner succeed in reaching the demographic of young professionals? How will the cost of utilities be handled? Will the loss of the lodging tax be an irremediable harm to the town? What about the displacement of school-attending children whose parents can only afford to house them in a motel room? Until these spider webs are swept away, the council will not be voting on this proposed SUP and the corresponding request for relief from Town parking standards, and it will be postponed to a work session in early June.

Planning Director and Zoning Administrator Lauren Kopishke presents the contents of Monday evening’s work session to the council.

Capable of cleaning house, Planning Director and Zoning Administrator Lauren Kopishke explained how this looks from the staff’s perspective in an interview. “This application, as a whole, aligns with the comprehensive plan. The implementation matrix makes the case that high-quality development can be achieved with redevelopment and specifically calls out the conversion of hotels as a potential means of providing housing. In this instance, the Town needs housing for its citizens, and this project offers that.” She also said: “Council should be considering the use only; rent rates are typically not a consideration because this property is not subject to rezoning with proffers. There is no negotiation aspect here for them to wrestle with. A special use permit determines if a use that may have a higher impact on an area is appropriate at a location.”

Though not a point-by-point response to all of Morris’s concerns, Kopishke addresses perhaps the most important point: will the apartments offered at the former Baymont Inn truly be affordable? According to Kopishke, that is truly the applicant’s concern. Red for a comet approaching, it does not take the queen’s astrologer to predict that the town of Front Royal is on a collision course with serious change. One might ask in this connection what a truly laissez-faire policy is. Here, Ayn Rand’s statement on the final page of Atlas Shrugged rings ominously true: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade.” Neither should the town council in crafting an ordinance or transacting a vote. Hopefully, this will only be a delay, and the freedom of independent business owners to fulfill the comprehensive plan will not be abridged.