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“If they want to change the zoning,” Mr. Konick told the planners, “the burden is on the applicant to show that it’s not a problem. It’s not going to make living at the Nichols property more attractive. Sooner or later they will move away, and nobody will want to buy it for a residence. They’ll apply to turn it into a commercial establishment, and that will happen all the way down the street to Krebser’s shopping center and then on the other side of the street. It’s already happening here in Washington. That’s a reason not to do this.
“A repair shop requires a special use permit in a village commercial zone, and you can’t have more than two inoperable vehicles left outside for 72 hours,” Mr. Konick said. “Six months is in conflict with the zoning ordinance. The statement ‘we could put all these cars out front if we wanted to,’ the 1973 ordinance prohibited that. They had to be completely screened. That’s a red herring argument. They couldn’t do it because it would block access to the service station. They couldn’t do it because Chevron won’t let them, and they couldn’t do it because it’s a violation of the zoning ordinance.
Once the public hearing was closed, Mr. McCarthy took exception to several of Mr. Konick’s statements. “The growth of commercial activities is not some sort of plague that needs to be checked,” he said. “We have said that it should be in the villages or on Route 211 in the General Commercial District ... If we say that service stations are not for major repairs, there is to be no dismantling or wrecking, there isn’t a gas station in the county that complies with that. . . The two car limitation does not apply to vehicles waiting to be serviced.”
Mr. McCarthy noted that the ordinance does allow a non-conforming use to be enlarged but not by more than 50 percent. “I don’t think general commercial is suitable for the village, but there is a problem with storing wrecked vehicles back there,” he said.
Mr. Fannon asked the Settles why they want to store wrecked vehicles.
Bubby Settle explained that they frequently have to wait for an insurance adjuster to look at the cars, and when the cars are towed in at the request of the Virginia State Police following an accident they must be kept for a month before they can be junked. Also he said they have to wait until unough vehicles accumulate for a hauler to consider it worth the trip to come get them. “It’s not a junk yard,” he said. ‘These cars do move. The lot isn’t going to change. We use the lot for parking.”
“There are implications for what we might do,” Mr. Gottlieb said. “The spotlight is on necessary violations of our ordinances. We need to give it some more thought.”
He found a consensus with the rest of the board on that, and the application was tabled until the Planning Commission’s July 18 meeting.
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