Town and County Planning Commissions compare notes on Comp Plan updates

On Wednesday, November 2nd, the Town and County Planning Commissions conducted a joint work session to review their respective Comprehensive Plan Reviews and attempt to get on the same page with the resultant update recommendations that will be made to each municipality’s elected bodies. A consensus was quickly reached that such inter-municipal communications at the planning department level, especially during future land use and developmental reviews, was a good idea and let’s do it again soon.

“First off, I’d like to welcome all of you. I think it’s great and way past due that both of our commissions get together,” Town Planning Commission Chairman Darryl Merchant said in greeting his County counterparts to Town Hall’s second-floor main meeting room.

At the far head of the table is Town Planning Director Lauren Kopishke, to her right (photo left) are Interim Town Attorney George Sonnett, Town Planning Commission Chairman Darryl Merchant, and members Josh Ingram, Connie Marshner, and Daniel Wells (one Town Commission seat is currently vacant.); at the near end of table, back to camera is County Planning Director Matt Wendling, and to his right, County Planning Commission Chairman Robert Myers, and members Hugh Henry, Greg Huson, Kaylee Richardson, and Scott Kersjes.

With an hour-and-a-half slated for the joint work session convened at 6:15 p.m. at Town Hall prior to the Front Royal Planning Commission having its own work session business to conduct, after introductions, the commissions and their departmental directors got down to business. That business began with Town Planning Director Lauren Kopishke summarizing citizen Comprehensive Plan input directing her departments establishment of a “vision” for the Town of Front Royal’s future and a game plan to achieve that future.

On the road to establishing four “BIG IDEAS” guiding the Comp Plan update, Kopishke noted several areas of citizen concern as the town government faces and plans the future in which those citizens must live. Among those were: “economic sustainability,” that will allow people and their children to build lives in this community; “environmental sustainability” that will maximize town citizen access to the surrounding natural attractions that draw tourists here annually; “improving public health and safety”; “dilapidated buildings”; residential housing options designed to meet the needs of various demographics including aging retirees; “small town charm”; “transportation” infrastructure; and drum roll please – “responsible and accountable governance”. The town planning director noted that latter item was “a HUGE bit of feedback” from citizens to the Comp Plan survey, leading to a brief coughing spell around the meeting room.

The four “BIG IDEAS” identified, with some additional supporting comment were: “Preserve our history and Create More of What We Love (apparently we “Love” our small town charm and the Historic Downtown’s role in creating that charm), Lifelong Community, Affordable Housing, and Environmental Access”.

As to “small town charm,” the staff agenda packet summary of the developing Comp Plan update observes: “There is a lot to the phrase ‘small town charm,’ and it can be a difficult balance to maintain that which makes a place so loved by its community and visitors … New development should make the community feel pleased and see a direct connection with an improvement in their quality of life. This is possible through careful planning that mitigates the undesirable impacts, such as traffic congestion, the closure of local businesses, or rising costs of living.”

Town Planning Director Kopishke takes the two commissions through a summary of the status of the Town Comprehensive Plan review and update – with the Town’s first Comp Plan update in 24 years looming.

On the issue of “careful planning that mitigates the undesirable impacts” later conversation addressed past experience where planning changes seem to have backfired. At the 36:50-mark of the linked Town video, Town Planning Director Kopishke observes, “I believe back in the ’90’s our zoning ordinance appears to have been changed to allow by-right conversions into multiple dwelling units. And it’s mostly affected the Historic area, here,” she said pointing at a land-use map projection of downtown Front Royal. “But what we have are streets that were never meant to accommodate a home being chopped up into five or six dwelling units, whether (done) legally or illegally. And then we’ve got parking issues, we’ve got code-enforcement issues. I think they were trying to do something good that backfired a little bit or had unintended consequences.”

Kopishke pointed to the Town’s current Comprehensive Plan review and update (the Town’s first rewrite since 1998 it was noted) as a tool to correct such long-festering problems. “Those are things that I think we can kind of start to remedy with this plan, and then especially with the zoning ordinance and the subdivision ordinance,” she said.

“Those are that complicated that they almost need to be looked at individually like for Special Use (permitting), rather than just blanket – ‘Hey, you all can do this in this area’ – just like short-term (rentals). Each one of them have to be looked at for special circumstances for each property,” County Planning Commissioner Hugh Henry said in response to Kopishke’s example of, perhaps what seemed like a good idea of by-right general permitting, gone wrong.

One might imagine on the Town Planning Commission side of the table, visions surfacing of the old Murphy Theater building 40-to-60-unit residential development proposal, where there are now 5 or less apartments behind commercial space. The Murphy building currently housing the Dynamic Life Coffee/Tea Shop on its first floor lies in the midst of Historic Downtown Front Royal at the single-lane, one-way Church Street intersection with East Main Street. That proposal is floating between several Town reviewing bodies at this point. Those include the Planning Commission and Board of Architectural Review (BAR) on the way to a final decision by the Front Royal Town Council.

Royal Examiner file photo looking west on E. Main St. showing the old Murphy Theater building at far left side of street.

“Because the town does have some older stock of housing, some of those houses were built well before the flood plains were mapped,” County Planning Director Matt Wendling observed, adding, “So, you may have a house with a basement that’s in the flood way and you have a flood event and a whole apartment down there, that person, they’re not living in that apartment for a while.”

Responding to a question about the County’s Comp Plan review, Wendling said, “We’re doing a review,  not a rewrite. So, much of what we have probably will remain closely the same.” However, he added that adjustments to fit changing circumstances in recent years, as well as future goals, would be addressed. “And we’ll address the goals and future land use maps” on both sides of the town-county line,  Wendling assured town officials.

One important aspect of matching goals and future land use will be transportation infrastructure as it impacts both sides of the town-county boundary. Several commissioners commented on how they change their typical driving routes during the fall leaf season still upon us due to the addition of tourist traffic to the local mix.

County Planning Director Matt Wendling, standing right, takes his turn, summarizing the County’s process in a review of its Comp Plan that will not include a rewrite, but an update that will try to coordinate with the Town’s update on its future land use and development plans.

In fact, following initial discussion of the Comp Plan processes, “Transportation” and “Planning at the Boundaries” was given its own subsection of the joint meeting discussion. That conversation began just over an hour into the meeting, at the 1:01:45 mark of the linked video. It included the one approved and VDOT-constructed railroad flyover slated for Rockland Road near the Rockland Park entrance in the county, as well as others pondered at various locations around the town and county, including parallel to Happy Creek Road that could help emergency access to Mary’s Shady Lane-accessed homes, the yet-to-be-developed Front Royal Limited Partnership (FRLP or Vazzana) properties; and Shenandoah Shores.

Also on the transportation table was the eventual extension of Leach Run Parkway north across Happy Creek Road, and the increased availability of electric vehicle recharging stations countywide. “Some people think it’s the wave of the future, it’s the wave of the very near future – Ford is selling electric F-150s faster than they can build them,” County Planning Commission Chairman Robert Myers observed. Town Planning Director Kopishke noted that Front Royal and surrounding county land were at a perfect distance from the D.C. Metro/Northern Virginia area for people with electric cars, which can make the trip one-way here on a single charge, get refilled for trips into the surrounding federal and state parks and Skyline Drive, then refill to get home.

Click here to watch the above and other discussions in the Town video.