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Staff Report:
This
proposed text amendment seeks to allow increased flexibility
in the Commercial and Industrial Districts to display
automobiles and similar motorized vehicles, such as farm
tractors, that are offered for sale within required yard
areas. Currently, Section 2-504.1 of the Fauquier County
Zoning Ordinance states that in the required yard area in
any Commercial or Industrial zoning district that “no goods
shall be displayed, offered for sale or stored, no service
or activity of any kind that is associated with the primary
use of the property shall be performed…and no processing or
other industrial operation of any kind shall be carried
on….” This regulation has been consistently applied within
the Commercial and Industrial districts and precludes the
display in required yard areas of any type of goods,
including automobile inventory associated with car
dealerships and tractors and related farm equipment
associated with farm equipment sales establishments.
However, a recent site plan application for a used car
dealership and other zoning enforcement cases involving the
display of various goods within, primarily, front yard
setbacks has raised the question as to whether the Ordinance
should be amended to allow some flexibility with respect to
activity in required yard areas.
Required
yard areas, or setbacks, serve multiple purposes: they
ensure that streets and yards are provided
more open space and adequate light and air, guarantee the
appropriate visibility of a particular land use occupying a
parcel of land for life and safety concerns, and allow
adequate area for roadways to be expanded when traffic
increases. For these reasons, among others, zoning
regulations have historically regulated and limited activity
within these yard areas. A review of the current Zoning
Ordinance regulations demonstrates the limited types of
activities that are allowed, subject to various conditions,
within yard areas in Fauquier County: Section 2-409 sets
forth various types of building features that are allowed to
encroach within a yard area; Section 2-504 allows for
off-street parking requirements in the Commercial and
Industrial Districts to be placed in a required yard area,
as well as service station gasoline pump islands; and
Section 7-604 allows landscaping and buffer requirements to
be placed within yard areas.
In
considering an amendment to address the issue identified
above, it is important to note that the current regulation
found in Section 2-504 prohibits the storage of any goods
for sale within any required yard. However, the scope
of the proposed amendment is intended to address only the
storage of automobiles and similar motorized vehicles in any
yard, and would not allow the storage of other commercial
goods, such as trailers or farm implements, in such areas.
This is justified in part by the existing provision in
Section 2-504.1 that allows off-street parking to be located
in a required yard area. While staff agrees that an argument
can be made that the parking of sale inventory vehicles
within a setback has potentially the same impact of allowing
customers or employees to park vehicles in the same area,
there are some discernible differences. For example,
off-street parking requirements compel designated spaces for
vehicles and require related landscaping, and such areas are
designed in an orderly fashion. Conversely, vehicle display
areas are often jumbled in an attempt to maximize the number
of vehicles that can be crowded into areas with prime
visibility. As such, these areas are not always paved,
rarely are striped like a conventional parking space and are
often located at the edges of front property lines to
maximize visibility.
As
identified in the proposed text amendment, staff is
recommending that Section 2-504.1 be amended to allow the
Zoning Administrator the authority to approve the display of
automobiles and other motorized vehicles within a required
yard area, subject to those identified standards. The
purposes of the standards are to ensure that the display
areas function and are designed as closely as possible to
those off-street parking areas currently allowed. As
previously stated, although the scope of the proposed
amendment is intended to address only the storage of
automobiles and similar motorized vehicles in any required
yard, the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors
should strongly consider what types of goods, if any, should
be allowed in such areas and under what conditions.
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