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Rappahannock News Staff Writer
Whether John Hur will get to build his lakeside house will be decided by Rappahannock’s Board of Zoning Appeals.
After lengthy debate at Monday’s board meeting, the Rappahannock Supervisors concluded that the legal knot presented by non-conforming lots in the old Rappahannock Lakes subdivision should be untied by the BZA through the variance process and not with a general amendment to the county’s zoning ordinance.
“This is a prime candidate for a variance ... It would be very unwise to rezone (the late 1950s development which predates Rappahannock’s land use oridnances),” said Supervisor Nelson Lane. “There’s no mistake in our zoning ordinance. The mistake came previous to our zoning ordinance. To rezone it now would only aggravate the problem and complicate things in the future . . . Everything about it smells of bad planning.”
“It’s something that must be looked at on a caseby-case basis,” agreed Supervisor Mike Massie.
This particular problem in Rappahannock Lakes arises from substandard lot size.
The lot for which Mr. Hur is the contract buyer is 90 feet wide at its broadest point: zoning regulations stipulate that a structure must be 50 feet from adjoining property lines on each side.
The lot is 150 feet deep: subtracting 50 feet from the already approved and installed septic field to lake shore, 20 feet from septic field to house (both setbacks established by the state Health Department), about three feet for the septic field itself, and 75 feet for the building setback from the front property line leaves 2 feet for a house.
State enabling legislation and local ordinances provide for variances to zoning regulations so that dwellings can be built on such non-conforming “grandfathered” lots, holdovers from the days before development standards were established. In considering a variance, the BZA must find that:
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