In a short while, attorneys for the town of Blacksburg and BURG — Blacksburg United for Responsible Growth — will petition the Virginia Supreme Court to hear their case: the idea that the town has the right to regulate its own growth and development, and to block developments that it deems harmful.
Related: Petition
The town is going to grow, we know that, but we want to regulate that development. We want to preserve the quality of life in the town," BURG steering committee chair Daniel Breslau said, "It takes a lot of energy to keep raising funds, to keep the legal case going."
BURG is a local grassroots organization promoting what it calls "smart growth."
"There's a broad range of policy ideas that fall under the umbrella heading of 'smart growth,'" Breslau said.
Smart growth entails closely regulated development.
"That means you don't grow too fast, you preserve downtown, you concentrate development in areas that are already developed, you have development that is infill rather than sprawl, you try to make it to the extent possible walkable, mixed use and you try to make it environmentally friendly to the extent that's practical," Breslau said.
"Instead of being just 'against that, against the Wal-Mart' we want to be a more comprehensive organization to promote smart growth," Breslau said.
Breslau said that the ongoing First and Main development project on South Main Street fails to rise to that level.
"I don't think that there's anyone on the town council at the time that would say that if they'd known what they had in mind, that they would've approved it," Breslau said.
Breslau said the First and Main project is exactly the wrong kind of development for Blacksburg.
"Look at the area where it's located, there's a quiet residential community," Breslau said.
BURG wants to see development that would enhance neighborhoods and the community.
"Something that is on a scale and a quality that fits that (neighborhood), so that it's not a huge scale development with huge-scale structures with large amounts of traffic coming in and out," Breslau said, "It should fit the area, it should be integrated with other uses so that it's mixed with residential and has a certain amount of green area and open space interspersed."
Early rezoning application appeared to propose the kind of smart growth initiative BURG would approve.
"The original rezoning application didn't even use the words 'shopping center' at all," Breslau said, "There was language claiming it would be unique, unlike other developments, that it would fit the character of the town."
"It said it would be a mixed-use development with residential, office and retail uses, it claimed it would be small-scale retail with residential above it and it would be pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly," Breslau said.
Instead, BURG feels that Fairmount and its partners sneaked a high-impact retail development project under the noses of the town.
"Clearly the town council had not asked for enough assurances. If you ask anyone who was on the town council what they thought they were approving, they'll tell you that it was something different than what is now being built," Breslau said.
That buyer's remorse led to BURG's formation.
"We came together as a response to what was happening at the South Main development in the spring of 2007," Breslau said, "We were a bunch of people who were really concerned about what was going on, about the way that that project had completely departed from what was presented to town council."
BURG's petition effort led to a surprising groundswell of local support for BURG.
"Our main effort was to support this Don Langrehr ordinance, Ordinance 1450," Breslau said.
Ordinance 1450 requires that any retail space of over 80,000 square feet apply for a special use permit - allowing town council to veto the otherwise by-right development. It was struck down in a suit before Montgomery County District Court earlier this year.
"We realized we had a responsibility to hold the developers to the what they'd said they were going to do and to hold them to the terms of this ordinance," Breslau said.
Breslau said the campaign has met with surprising success.
"We saw that this was bringing a lot of people who were concerned about this issue together into the politics of land use and planning," Breslau said, "We got the word out about why that ordinance was necessary. We had an incredible response to that, we had more people sign our petition than voted in that year's town elections."
"It was clear that there were a large number of people who shared similar concerns," Breslau said.
BURG did its door-to-door work, establishing a grassroots campaign. People who weren't involved in town politics became interested, sending e-mails to town officials and coming to important meetings, Breslau said.
"We were really surprised during the last town council elections, the candidates we supported won, all the ones we supported are the ones who won and the ones we didn't support lost," Breslau said, "We've got a really nice group of people in town council who're going to be proactive on the issues."
BURG and Blacksburg Town Council will have their first verbal arguments before the Virginia Supreme Court this summer.
"We have a pretty successful land-use attorney who's won against Wal-Mart representing citizen's groups in Virginia before," Breslau said.
The group will be represented by Richmond land-use attorney Philip Strother.