Christiansburg Approves More Housing; Existing Roads Asked to Figure It Out
CHRISTIANSBURG, VA — After months of hearings, revisions, petitions, traffic studies, neighborhood objections and enough parliamentary procedure to make a zoning ordinance develop consciousness, Christiansburg Town Council approved a controversial rezoning on Kimball Lane that could eventually bring nearly 100 new homes to an already growing part of town.
The February 24 decision rezoned roughly 38 acres at 300 Kimball Lane SW from agricultural to single-family residential use. Developer RWJW Properties had proposed building at a density of no more than 2.5 detached homes per acre, with no more than 53 homes during the first three years. Engineering representatives had previously told council that the anticipated starting price would be approximately $375,000 and up.
That final number is worth lingering over. The New River Valley does need housing. What it needs rather more urgently is housing that the people already working in the New River Valley can afford without first winning a scratch-off ticket.
The project arrived before council after four public hearings and repeated revisions. Residents raised concerns about traffic, sewer capacity, density, road conditions, sidewalks, school impacts, neighborhood character and whether existing infrastructure should be improved before additional development is placed on top of it. The Christiansburg Planning Commission had voted 3-2 against recommending the rezoning earlier in February.
Residents were not exactly coy about their objections.
Official town minutes record complaints about vehicles already running stop signs, narrow streets effectively reduced to one lane by parked cars, a lack of sidewalks, flooding, deteriorating pavement and the safety of children waiting for school buses. One resident cited a petition containing 475 signatures requesting that the development have two exits. Another argued that the proposed traffic study underestimated peak-hour trips.
Even one of the neighborhood’s younger residents addressed council to ask officials not to allow the development to overwhelm what she described as a calm neighborhood. WDBJ reported more than a dozen residents speaking against the proposal during the final meeting.
The opposition was not simply “people don’t like change,” although every zoning dispute eventually produces at least one version of that argument. Residents repeatedly focused on an order-of-operations question: should a town add the development first and solve the infrastructure later, or prepare the infrastructure before creating the demand?
Municipal government has traditionally approached this dilemma using the sophisticated engineering principle known as “we’ll cross that bridge when another 90 cars are trying to cross it.”
Supporters of the rezoning argued that Christiansburg also has to accommodate growth. Steve Semones of Westwood Professional Services, representing the developer, told council that new housing means new residents, workers and customers as well as additional tax revenue. Councilwoman Tonya Hockett said officials had considered traffic and safety concerns, reviewed crash history and would be better positioned to prepare necessary improvements if the project moved forward.
That argument also exists within a very real regional problem. Montgomery County’s own comprehensive-planning process identified housing affordability, workforce retention and dwindling developable land in Blacksburg and Christiansburg as major challenges. Residents surveyed by the county said they wanted more housing options, while economic-development stakeholders warned that wages and affordability have to remain aligned if the region expects younger people to stay.
And there lies the sour center of the lemon.
Between Virginia Tech and Radford University, the New River Valley has no shortage of young people temporarily arriving. The region has built much of its modern economy around educating them, housing them, feeding them, entertaining them and collecting rent from them until commencement.
The more difficult trick is convincing some of them to remain.
A durable regional economy cannot be built entirely around an annual human tide that comes in carrying mini-fridges every August and goes back out carrying diplomas every May. Housing helps retention—but only when the housing, employment, transportation, culture and wages form a community people can actually afford to inhabit after the student discount expires.
The Kimball Lane vote itself concluded with an unusually elegant demonstration of local-government mechanics. Council first split 3-3 on a motion to deny the rezoning. Mayor Michael Barber cast the deciding vote against that motion. Council then split 3-3 again on a motion to approve the rezoning, and Barber cast the deciding vote in favor.
Thus the same proposal was, over the span of several minutes, unsuccessfully denied and successfully approved—a phenomenon known to physicists as superposition and to town councils as Tuesday.
Barber acknowledged the political cost of his decision, telling the meeting that he understood he would probably lose friends over the vote. Council members who opposed the project continued raising concerns afterward, and official March records show written dissents over the approval and requests that council reconsider it.
For Christiansburg, the larger question is not whether the town should grow. It is already growing.
The question is whether the New River Valley can turn development into community, rather than simply inventory—adding homes, sidewalks, businesses, arts, transportation and reasons to remain in roughly the same order.
Otherwise, the region may succeed brilliantly at building places for everybody to live right before they decide to leave.
