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Staff Report:
This
proposed text amendment allows increased flexibility in the
RA zone in order to allow re-use of the Hartwood Airport. Hartwood
is located straddling the Fauquier/Stafford County line; the
property is zoned RA/Rural Agriculture and contains
approximately 130 acres; about 100 acres in Fauquier County
and about 27 acres in Stafford. Previously approved by
special exception for airport use, Hartwood no longer
functions as an airport. In 2007, the County approved a
text amendment to the Zoning Ordinance to allow accessory
industrial use of the property for research and development
related to transportation. Zoning approved an Administrative
Permit to allow the accessory use in 2007, and that activity
is ongoing today. The property is utilized as a testing
facility for technology utilized at border crossings;
vehicles drive through simulated highway checkpoints,
utilizing the existing linear-runways as the highway
layout. The project has been very successful, and the
government now seeks to expand the testing facilities on the
site by relocating the simulated set of checkpoints on the
Fauquier portion of the airport to a runway within the
Stafford County portion of the airport, and creating a
larger test lane facility with associated improvements
(paving, lighting, canopy, etc.). Although a government
funded project, the property would remain in private
ownership. This expanded use cannot be accommodated under
the 2007 text amendment, as it can no longer be considered
accessory to an airport, as the airport no longer
functions.
The
proposed use at Hartwood would be categorized as General
Industrial use under the Zoning Ordinance. Existing Zoning
Ordinance regulations only allow General Industrial uses in
the RA district on parcels a minimum of 200 acres in size,
and then only when they actually utilize one acre or less.
The Hartwood property is just over 100 acres in size (in
Fauquier), and the proposed use will occupy more than one
acre of the property; therefore, this classification does
not work for the proposed list. The existing Zoning
Ordinance allows another category of industrial use, called
Limited Industrial (research and development) in the RA
district on parcels of 100 acres, but in this category all
activities must occur indoors. As the activities for the
proposed use occur entirely outdoors; the Limited Industrial
category therefore does not work for the proposed use.
The
proposed text amendment narrowly expands the opportunity for
the General Industrial use on parcels less than 200 acres in
size and to occupy more than one acre by limiting the use to
properties formerly approved by the County as Airports.
There are only two such airports in the County: Hartwood and
the Warrenton-Fauquier Airport (which is primarily zoned
Industrial). From a land use perspective, where a rural
property was once developed as an airport and has
infrastructure in place such as the runways and buildings
that were associated with the airport use, providing
additional flexibility to reuse these facilities for other
uses may be appropriate. As proposed, the use would
require special exception approval, and several additional
standards have been proposed for the text amendment to
assure that such industrial re-use is compatible with
surrounding rural properties.
The Board
of Supervisors initiated the text amendment at its December
10, 2009 meeting. The Planning Commission held a public
hearing on the proposed amendment on January 28, 2010 and
unanimously recommended approval.
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