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For want of adequate road access, the Rappahannock supervisors on Monday denied a special exception permit for the indoor firing range sought by Harold Young of Huntly.
Mr. Young proposed to erect a prefabricated building for weekend turkey shoots. It wasn’t the use which disturbed neighboring landowners; not a single speaker at Monday’s hearing raised objections over noise, the possibility of escaping bullets or similar arguments made in the past against other outdoor ranges. Rather they focused on the inadequacy of the private 20-foot right-of-way serving Mr. Young’s approximately 26-acre lot and the commercial venture’s incompatibility with the neighborhood’s existing mix of residential and agricultural uses.
“At no point” on the private road off Route 662 “is it possible for two cars to pass,” wrote Leslie Davis Arnold. The road, which is maintained by Mr. Young, Garfield Burke and the five other property owners who live along its less-than-one-mile length, already has problems with mud and potholes during winter months and dust and speeding vehicles the rest of the year, Mrs. Arnold maintained. A commercial firing range in this “quiet agricultural neighborhood (and) small backwater” would be “as appropriate as a bull in a china shop,” she said.
Also by letter, Edward C. Bryant pointed out that that there is no commercial activity in the immediate area and he too argued that the road will not withstand the heavy traffic generated by the firing range. The private road “passes within an automobile’s width” of Garfield Burke’s residence where the Burkes’ grandchildren often visit and play in the yard, Mr. Bryant added.
Area residents know of the Burkes’ grandchildren and drive particularly slow by the house, said David Arnold. “Outsiders” would not exercise that same caution, he added, describing the private right-of-way as “a little backwoods cul de sac . . . more like a driveway than a road.”
“The Youngs are wonderful neighbors,” Bill Semple said, but seconded the opposition to the firing range on the grounds that the road is inadequate to handle the traffic that would be generated.
“Nobody objects to an indoor firing range or to the Youngs, just to the siting,” said Phil Irwin, noting that the county’s > comprehensive plan calls for coramgrcial development to occur in the area between Flatwood and the town of Washington. “Here it’s totally objectionable.”
Approval of the special exception permit would “introduce a commercial operation with regular and frequent intrusions of vehicles from the
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