Zoning Ordinance Changes and Comprehensive Plan rewrite considered at Town Planning Commission Work Session

The Front Royal Planning Commission met April 7 for a work session to discuss several items left over from their March 17^th meeting. Town Manager Steven Hicks was asked to take the opportunity to brief the commissioners on the strategy for the rewrite of the Town’s Comprehensive plan, which is badly outdated, having been last written and adopted in 1988. The Code of Virginia requires every governing body to develop a comprehensive plan and to review it for potential amendments every 5 years.

Now former Planning Director Tim Wilson had recommended to the commission that it ask the Town Council to fund the plan rewrite in its 2022 Budget, which it has now done. Town Manager Hicks provided a background briefing on the purposes of the Comprehensive Plan and a proposed timeline with milestones for completion. There will be several opportunities to provide public input to the plan during the preparation and drafting during late 2021 and early 2022, and the commissioners were united in their desire to see as much public input as possible. Under the proposed timeline, public input will begin with a Joint Town Council/Planning Commission meeting to adopt vision, goals, and objectives in December 2021, and continue through December 2022 with Public Forums, Hearings, and final adoption. The Comprehensive Plan’s companion document is the Zoning Ordinance and Map, which will be jointly developed with the plan.

The Chairman then turned to the first left-over item from its March 17 meeting. Council has asked the Planning Commission to weigh in on proposed ordinance changes to the Front Royal Town Code covering Abatement of Blighted buildings. It is not difficult to find buildings in the town that have been allowed to fall into disrepair, and the means to mitigate the situation has historically been a balancing act for town officials as they attempt to induce property owners to keep their buildings safe and attractive. Virginia law grants municipalities the authority to declare properties as blighted and to take action to remove the blight, but it is a complex process and time consuming.

Many properties that could be cited under the Blighted Buildings ordinance are on nonconforming lots, so owners are restricted from improving the building so long as it violates current zoning restrictions. In some cases, the current ordinance restricts the cost of repairs to the property, which acts as a disincentive to owners to improve them legally. The Town Council wants to make it as easy as possible to bring properties into compliance with the law. The commission requested that the planning staff provide a redline version of the proposed ordinance to reflect changes since the last review for the next regular commission meeting.

A text amendment to the Planning section of the Front Royal Town Code was tabled by the Commission at the last meeting to allow for discussion at a work session. The genesis of the proposed amendment was a resolution from the town council in February that directed the planning department to prepare an ordinance amendment for a public hearing and a Planning Commission recommendation for approval by the Town Council. The amended ordinance mainly rescinds or loosens some restrictions on developing apartments in the Downtown Commercial District (C-2). The commissioners agreed that the proposed amendment might have unintended consequences by applying exemptions too broadly, and agreed to strike – temporarily, at least – a provision that created an exception to the supplementary regulations in section 175-113 related to lot sizes, building height, and parking, for apartment development in that entire district, which runs from Jackson Street on the south, to E. 4^th St on the north. Commissioners felt that a future, smaller exemption covering East Main Street and Chester Streets might be more appropriate. The amended proposal can now be acted on by the Commission at its next meeting.

The remaining changes include:

• adding text to the ordinance section 175-47(A) that limits conversion of existing residential and/or commercial structures to a maximum of eight total dwelling units.
• Removing text in section 175-48(A) that permits conversions only in buildings constructed after January 1, 1999.
• Removing text in Section 175-49(A) that imposes a requirement for an additional 1,000 square feet of lot area for each dwelling unit in excess of 1.