Town Council Reverses Harbor Zoning Request

In November, the Mirror reported that the Town Council had denied a request to rezone a small part of the harbor area. The initial ruling was that the vote failed, however, this should not have been the case. A note from Town Manager John Hozey addresses the Cape Charles Town Council’s extremely egregious error:

At the November 16th regular Town Council meeting a zoning map change was requested south of
the harbor, rezoning a parcel that was partly zoned “harbor” and partly zoned “General
Business/Light Industrial”, to only “harbor” for the entire parcel. At the meeting, the request was
declared failed due to lack of sufficient votes. However, that determination was in error. Upon
further research, it was confirmed that the motion to approve this request was indeed passed, and
that that parcel has now been re-zoned as requested. We apologize to the public for any
confusion regarding this matter.

The proposal, presented by Eyre Baldwin and Cherrystone developers aims to repurpose a 1.4 sliver of the Industrial district into a Harbor zone, which would make the zoning consistent with the adjacent property already owned by the applicant. According to Mr. Baldwin, the new zoning is aimed at facilitating mixed-use development, including commercial ventures, residential spaces, and recreational amenities. Proponents argued that this shift would invigorate the area, attract new businesses, and diversify the town’s economic landscape.

Opinion: The November 16th meeting was not so much a comedy of errors as it was a confederacy of dunces. Anyone who had read the packet and proposal would have thought this would be a slam dunk for the applicant. This was not the case. Councilman Grossman (remotely) and Bucholz came out against the proposal and offered odd and somewhat arcane arguments that in the end were apropos of nothing, and which only served to leave the Town Council and staff with egg on their faces.