Neighbors get council’s ear, beat rezoning
SALEM – After listening to passionate pleas from residents in a historic, largely black neighborhood, Salem City Council members unanimously turned down a request Feb. 22 to rezone adjacent property for light manufacturing – even though it could mean jobs.
Council voted 5-0 to deny a request by Valley Properties and L&M Properties to rezone four lots on Braxton and Harrison to make more employee parking and truck-loading docks in what used to be the Home Shopping Network building. The building has been vacant since 2005 when HSN moved that segment to Tennessee.
Braxton Heights neighborhood leader Gertrude Harris leans on her son, Dr. Wayne Harris, as she makes her case Monday night for Salem City Council to deny a zoning request that would have turned wooded lots, shown on the drawing behind them, into parking spaces for future tenants in the former Home Shopping Network building adjacent to their neighborhood. Photo by Meg Hibbert
Owners say they have three smaller firms that employ about 30 people now in the 540,000-square-foot building, and to be able to get other tenants, need to create parking next to another side of the building, along with truck loading docks.
Neighbors were concerned that if a lot that is now wooded is rezoned from residential to light manufacturing, the change would ruin their quiet neighborhood of Braxton Heights with noise from tractor trailers, light pollution and increased traffic.
The leader of the opposition was 86-year-old Gertrude Harris who spoke eloquently about how the character of the neighborhood could be lost. More than 35 other residents attended Monday night’s public hearing, with half a dozen of them speaking out against the rezoning proposal.
“We don’t want to lose our area,” she told council. “I love to sit on the front porch early in the morning with a newspaper or a magazine. My neighbor and I are able to talk from our porches.”
More cars and trucks would disturb the feeling of safety and security, Harris said. “This request would change everything.”
Others who spoke were householders Edward Hrinya and Dustin Cupp, Shermaine Greenhowe, Joanne Hale, Maxine Joiner Wright on behalf of her mother, Emily Whiteside, and Lewis Barker.
Barker and his father, George, own a rental house on Braxton that is not rented to college students, he pointed out, “And the reason we have been able to keep it filled is the advantage of a quiet neighborhood.” Barker added, “I feel like what’s in place is what’s best for the neighborhood.”
Council members asked if there were any plans for security for the complex, in response to neighbors’ concerns about more strangers coming into their area. John Lipscomb of L&M said Novozymes, which leases a portion of the building, has security, and when Hanover Direct was there, it had security, also.
Maryellen Goodlatte, the attorney for the developers, closed her appeal to council before the vote by saying,
“We recognize the neighbors are concerned. We tried to impose proffers to put limits on this development…so that the neighbors can co-exist.”
After the vote, Lipscomb approached Gertrude Harris to shake her hand.
Her son, who grew up on Braxton but moved to Roanoke when he was superintendent of Roanoke City Schools from 1993 to 2004, said, “This vote demonstrate again that Salem considers kids and citizens first. That’s why Salem is such a great place now.”
