Some Facts Behind the Current Zoning Drama

Do we want to encourage visionary local entrepreneurs to invest in Front Royal, or do we want to drive them away?  That is the question before the Town Council on January 22.

So far, 2024 has been a quiet year.  Maybe even boring.  Somebody had to create some drama to keep life interesting – and somebody has.  A proposed change of two words in the Town Code from “fifty” to “five” is causing an explosion of slander, detraction, and false accusations to roil Front Royal.

The specter of the “Louduoning of the Valley” is invoked as the consequence of making a zoning change.  Much of the anger and confusion seems to be based on misunderstanding. In fact, that spectre is more likely without the proposed zoning change.

Let me, as a member of the Front Royal Planning Commission, try to shed some light (rather than heat) upon the situation.

Fact #1: Big developers are eyeing Front Royal.  We know that.

Fact/Goal #2: Front Royal wants to keep its small-town charm. To preserve small-town charm, we don’t want huge, sprawling new developments.

Fact #3: Front Royal needs more housing at all income levels.

Fact/Goal #4: Front Royal needs to be a “Lifetime Community” where people will want and be able to spend their whole lives: starting out, growing families, retirement.  That means jobs and a range of housing options.

Fact#5: Locally sourced small development can achieve Facts/Goals #2-4, whereas big developers can’t.

Fact #6: Folks who agree with #2-5 should be friends with each other instead of attacking each other in public forums and on social media.

What’s causing the ruckus?

The pretext for this controversy is a rezoning request to create one little Planned Neighborhood Development (PND). The Planning Commission has recommended that PNDs be limited to 5 acres in size.  In zoning jargon, a PND is “multi-use,” i.e., a mixture of high-density business and residential occupancy.

Some of the confusion may be because there is currently another large parcel of land zoned PND in Front Royal.  That property is undeveloped – but when it gets ready to move, it too will have to go through the whole process: due diligence, Planning Commission, Town Council, and site plan review by Town and County.  According to the current Comprehensive Plan (https://www.frontroyalva.com/DocumentCenter/View/3222/Comprehensive-Plan-Final-Draft-May-19-2023), only the “mixed-use commercial” areas of town (see pages 150-51) would currently be eligible for PND in any case.

And here’s an important fact which, according to some comments I’ve heard, is not well understood: future PND will still have to be considered on a case-by-case basis!  In other words,  burdensome preliminary engineering and other studies, four Planning Commission and Town Council meetings, and public hearings all along the way.  That’s a lot of work to do for five acres!  And offers a lot of opportunity for public objection!

Creating the zoning animal of a PND of up to five acres does NOT create “popup areas of development that could quickly transform our extraordinary small town into a mini-Manassas,” as Lynda Turner stated in a public comment on November 15, 2023.  It is not “opening the floodgates to development,” as someone else has stated on Facebook.  It is merely creating a new set of bureaucratic hurdles for one particular type of small development.

Question to ponder: if you’re a big developer, are you going to want to go through all that work and expense for a measly 5 acres?  No!  That means that five-acre PNDs are not attractive to big developers, by definition. We should count ourselves lucky to have neo-tradition-minded small builders who want to tackle such projects!

What is a PND anyhow?

It is the antithesis of a subdivision with scores of homes.  A PND is a concept: a plan to integrate residential and commercial space in a single project.  If Front Royal’s Main Street had been planned back in its day, it might be a PND: a high-density walkable neighborhood that does not look like “little boxes made of ticky-tacky all the same.” It has retail on the ground level, office or residential above.  In Magdalen’s current proposal, parking is on a basement level – something that would be nice on Main Street but is not possible because it wasn’t planned.

A PND is interesting to walk around, as Main Street is, and convenient to live or work in; for instance, there could be a daycare in one building and a mom-and-pop convenience in another, so a woman could leave her job upstairs in one building and WALK a few steps to pick up her child and some milk and bread on her way home – and not have to drive five miles to pick up the child and then another two miles to pick up the milk, wrestling with a car seat both times. Or maybe she could even live upstairs in one building and WALK home from daycare, shop, and work in nearby buildings.  How nice would that be?  What would be wrong with having such convenience in an attractive, neo-traditional style?

The plot of land in question is a sum total of ten (10) vacant acres, with a street address of 311 Leach Street and adjoining properties.  The entity requesting the zoning change is a business named Magdalen Capital – which had originally requested a change to an even smaller, only two acres!

The rhetorical slings and arrows claim that Magdalen Capital is a stalking horse for NVR, Ryan Homes, or companies of that ilk.  But a basis for that claim cannot be found.

Magdalen’s website describes themselves as “four family-oriented professionals seeking to bring their expertise to bear on investment initiatives executed with a community-oriented ethos, insistence on aesthetic beauty, and a dedication to lasting quality.”  They have been working on their neo-traditional design proposal for two years and have spent lots of money on the environmental study, traffic study, and infrastructure study.  Hundreds of pages of said study are available for public scrutiny in the Town Planning and Zoning Office.

Magdalen owns one single parcel of land.  Building this PND is a side project: they make their living by providing solar energy installation, handyman service, property management, foundation repair, and restoration.   All their investors are business people who live and work in the northern Shenandoah Valley.  No Wall Street companies, no big developers.  The principals moved here in the early 2000s and are raising their families here.  They want Front Royal to be somewhere their children will want to stay and be able to work.  (As someone whose children would rather die than live in the Front Royal they grew up in, I think that’s a worthy goal.)

Magdalen had originally proposed a two-acre size for their PND.  In the public hearing on November 15, 2023, Megan Marrazzo urged it to be changed to five acres, which suggestion was later accepted by the Planning Commission.  What’s ironic is that under current zoning, up to 27 new single-family homes could be built on that same ten-acre parcel. Twenty-seven new homes would be another subdivision, albeit a small one. It wouldn’t be a combination of new rental units and some brand-spanking-new office suites with parking, which are the urgent need in Town.

So, does Front Royal want more old-same-old subdivision housing?  Or do we want a livable, walkable community where work, leisure, and home can be close and convenient?

Do we want to encourage visionary local entrepreneurs to invest in Front Royal, or do we want to drive them away?

Connie Marshner
Front Royal, VA

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