Tourist homes approved
The Rappahannock County Board of Zoning Appeals approved two tourist homes at its regular April 26 meeting held in the county courthouse. The board also tabled an application for a nonconforming family apartment, after advising the applicant on various ways to proceed.
Flint Hill resident Ann Callaway’s application to treat a cabin on her property as a tourist home was approved. Previously approved as a guest house in 2009, the cabin sits in a wooded area and is not visible from the main house or North Poes Road..
The board also approved Sally-Anne Andrew’s application to convert her Christmas Tree Lane residence into a tourist home. As in the Rappahannock County Planning Commission the week prior to the BZA meeting, the board discussed the road maintenance agreement between Andrew and her neighbors.
Not all of the property owners along Christmas Tree Lane have signed the agreement, but Andrew pledged to maintain the 200-foot stretch of the road in front of her property.
Susannah Cadwalader appeared before the board to discuss her special use permit application to convert a pre-existing building, the Hawlin Store, into a family apartment on her 162-acre property on Hawlin Road in Woodville. The Hawlin store and post office was built in the late 1800s, but the post office closed and moved in 1937.
The BZA discussion, as had the planning commission discussion, revolved around the size of the building. In her application, Cadwalader acknowledged that the square footage of the oneand-a-half story structure was larger than the county ordinance allows. The store, she estimated, based on the building’s 20- by 40foot exterior dimensions, was about 1600 square feet, whereas the ordinance specifies that a family apartment can be no larger than 1200 feet.
The planning commission asked Cadwalader to submit site drawings and specific dimensions of the usable space within the store, before they tabled the application. The BZA also tabled it while Cadwalader gathers additional information.
A video of this meeting is available at rappnews.com/ video