Rocklanders have their say about a proposal to build 286 homes on golf course properties: planning commission to act June 14

It wasn’t hard to imagine, going in, what one was about to hear on Thursday evening, May 4, about Richard Runyon’s proposal to build 286 houses on a large portion of the site of the Shenandoah Valley Golf Club. It was a collective thumbs down from more than 100 standing-room-only residents of the rural Rockland Historic District a few miles north of the Town of Front Royal.

Some 30 among the crowd vented their respective spleens, so to speak, castigating Runyon’s development proposal, including one German national on a personal visit to the United States, who stood to point out the absence of any previous reference to the effect on global warming of the proposed residential community in what they described as a relatively small space.

Bottom line: golf course owner Runyon’s plan, in the hands of the Warren County Planning Commission, is not a popular topic among many local residents, including Jo Ann Nichols. Nichols has lived on Rockland Road for the past 50 years, enjoying what she called “the beauty and peace of living adjacent to the golf club for so many years.”

Fifty-year Rockland resident Jo Ann Nichols receives a hand with her script as she becomes the stand-out speaker at the Rockland residents meeting. Photos by Susan O’Kelly

The retired Warren Memorial Hospital nurse made what she called “a respectful request that Runyon’s re-zoning application be rejected by the planning commission, drawing applause. A commission hearing on the Runyon application to rezone the 104-acre area from rural to urban/residential is set for June 14. The commission has three ways to go: reject the application, approve it, or table it. Whatever, it will be the Board of Supervisors option to accept or not, whatever the planning commission recommends.

Chris Anderson of Luray, representing Alliance for the Shenandoah Valley, a non-profit, chaired the 95-minute session, handing the question and answer period to Lori L. Britt, director of James Madison University School of Communication Studies, who handled the Q and A with aplomb, despite problems with the microphone.

Lori Britt of JMU’s School of Communications Studies moderates the questions at the Rockland meeting.

Anderson announced early that a planning commission member had called in regrets that he/she would not be in attendance.

In her presentation, Nichols directed the commission’s attention to the Virginia Code that reads in part, “… that residential areas be provided with healthy surroundings for family life; that agricultural and forest land be preserved; and that the growth of the community be consonant with the efficient and economical use of public funds.”

“I don’t see how building … a potential residential suburban development near my home (she faces the golf course) meets this test.” The proposed 286 homes would be age-restricted to “over 55s” and encompass at least two of Shenandoah Valley Club’s three 9-hole courses. However, Runyon believes that the new homes will not add to Rockland’s already well-known traffic woes, those woes due mainly to narrow roads and increased railroad traffic due to the combination of age-restricted housing and the reduction in recreational golfing visits.

Said longtime resident and farmland owner Mary Powers Ryan: “Rockland has houses, a church, a cemetery, and three golf courses, but it does not have the infrastructure to support high-density housing and commercial businesses. Our roads are narrow and winding and have no shoulders. Water and sewer are provided by wells and by septic drain fields … building close to 300 new residences … will change the nature of Rockland (recently named a historical site) and turn the community into a small town.”

Little was said about the German national’s reference to “global warming,” and the meeting closed quietly just short of two hours, with those present apparently having said all they came to say.

Lifelong resident and local cattle farmer Susan Bowen takes the mic at the community meeting.

The last word will come, perhaps this summer, when the board of supervisors gets its planning commission’s recommendation.

Stay tuned!