The decision was announced the afternoon of Feb. 4, after Salem City Council members met the day before with City Attorney Steve Yost in a closed session to be briefed on legal precedents.

Council was scheduled to hold a public hearing on the matter on Feb. 8, which will probably be postponed.

After the Salem Planning Commission recommended denial of CommUNITY Church’s zoning application for a building on Russell Drive, the church retained an attorney who notified the city federal law gives the church the right to use the property.

In a statement released Feb. 4, Council released a prepared statement that said “After a great deal of consultation and research, the City of Salem has determined that it is not in the city’s best interest to challenge a federal statute in an effort to keep CommUNITY Church from locating on Russell Drive and occupying a building situated in an area that is currently zoned business-commerce.

“…Although the City will not be rezoning the property as requested, it recognizes, in these unique circumstances, that the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 takes priority.”

City leaders said part of their decision was the potential for a legal battle to be both lengthly and costly.

Now citizens from that area have an opportunity to determine what the 31,000 acres in the Glenvar community looks like in the future, county planners promise.

Glenvar resident Shirl Chittum and her son, Zachary, 8, look at maps of the Glenvar area before the Glenvar Community Meeting Jan. 11 at Glenvar Middle School. Photo by Meg Hibbert

Monday night, local residents had their first chance, at a community meeting for the Glenvar Community Plan that is expected to be prepared and adopted some time in the next year. It will be a guide for decisions about growth, development and how the area west of the Salem City Line to Montgomery County, south to Poor Mountain and north to Fort Lewis Mountain could look in the next five, 10 and 15 years.

About 120 people pored over a dozen maps showing current uses and future possibilities with blazes of yellow for existing residential, green for conservation, brown for rural village, purple for industrial, which ringed the Glenvar Middle School Auditorium.

Most of the people were middle age to older residents, with a sprinkling of developers, county officials, planning commission members. There was also Catawba District Supervisor Joe “Butch” Church, who represents the Glenvar area and who gave opening and closing remarks, and Roanoke County Administrator Clay Goodman, who didn’t talk.

Burned by past county government actions, a number of residents at the meeting were skeptical their ideas for the future of Glenvar would be heeded.

Shirl Chittum, who was looking at maps before the meeting with her son, 8-year-old Zachary who attends Glenvar Elementary School, was one of those.

“My mother, Elaine Trumbull, fought annexation when Salem tried to annex us, after my parents moved here in 1957. They (Roanoke County government) haven’t listened to anything we’ve ever said. The main problem was they sold us to the higher bidder,” Chittum said, mentioning the regional jail located farther out Main Street at Dixie Caverns, Spring Hollow Reservoir – “Which isn’t what they promised us from the get go. It was supposed to be a park. It’s not open to the public and you have to pay to use anything.”

Chittum was also steamed about the new $32-million multigenerational recreation center that opened Jan. 1 in North County and about which, she said, Roanoke County citizens knew nothing until it was under construction.

Others, such as contractor Sheldon Henderson of G&H construction, were optimistic that the community meeting and future talks would open communication between Glenvar residents and county decision makers.

“I appreciate that they’re paying attention to this end of the county,” he said. “I think Glenvar needs a little dressing. We need commercial growth, good commercial development, in this end of the county.”

Landowner David Shelor spoke out at the end of the meeting, asking for a “ground up instead of top down” input from a committee of citizens. He also asked Church and planners if the county had thought about buying up blighted property that is vacant and for sale, particularly along West Main Street. “I know the county spent a lot of money on a recreation center. We could buy and sell vacant property and make money,” Shelor said.

Others asked questions about how long four-laning of West Main Street would take – about two years, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation, with construction due to start by May, County Planner David Holladay said – and if landscaping and sidewalks could be added.

Sue Williams asked if the planned Intermodal rail-to-truck transfer yard across the Montgomery County line is expected to affect traffic. “Could we possibly end up being a big truck stop, big warehouse area?”

Robert Rector, interim administrator of Richfield Retirement Center, pointed out 750 people live on the 50-acre campus on West Main Street in Glenvar. “We’re probably more affected than any subdivision in Glenvar. I ask the Planning Commission not to forget we’ve got one of the largest retirement communities in Virginia; let Richfield be one of the players” in developing the Glenvar Community Plan.

He particularly emphasized air quality, and how decisions such as the former proposal for an asphalt plant almost next-door to Richfield – which the planning commission voted to recommend for approval but Adams Construction decided to move farther west, near Dixie Caverns – could have affected the health of residents.

“We’ve had people who have had to move because of the quality of air from an industry across the street,” he said, referring to creosote air emissions from Koppers, which creosotes railroad ties.

County staff said they plan to meet with individuals and groups between now and May to get more ideas, and come back with proposals for the future.

Meanwhile, a Glenvar Community Plan survey is available at the Glenvar Library and at the Roanoke County Administration Building, as well as online. Results from the survey will be tabulated and used in developing the community plan, planners promised.

The survey is also available online on the county’s website, roanokecountyva.gov.

Results will be made available on the Glenvar Community Plan website (http://tinyurl.com/GlenvarPlan), planners said.

Glenvar Community Plan is also on the county’s Facebook site and Twitter.