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Slicing through the growing controversy, now toward costly litigation, is one fundamental question which all sides have got to square up to with regard to the Rappahannock ski area’s future.
That issue is, most simply—what is going to happen to this 300 acres of commercially zoned prime county real estate if the present ski area owners are denied its use for the proposed yearround ski operations?
Those on both sides of this issue can at least agree, based on its long and disastrous history, that our climate and competition from other ski areas offers zero to little hope that the present or any future owner of this land is going to reopen it as a conventional snow skiing area. It has seemed a gift of technology and time that the German designed snowless Alpine Slide came along just now to give this county a clean, healthy new industry.
So if the new all-season ski and slide proposal is finally turned down, then this commercial tract must almost inevitably be converted to some form of housing development. It is simply knee jerk dreaming to anticipate any other potential use of such high priced land. And a mountainside development of craekerbox weekend houses is not precisely what this County, or its tax base needs.
^et the same vague zoning use ordinance which has plagued this case from the beginning could make such real estate development virtually inevitable. The courts would all but laugh at an effort by the Board of Zoning Appeals and Supervisors to deny it. To the credit of the present ski
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